tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5337555368793819627Tue, 20 Feb 2018 22:21:14 +0000doing scienceproject foldersea icemetabeing a scientistmathematicsweeding sourcesclimatemiscquestionsmodellingreadingclimate changeobservationsweatherhealthblogspoliticsrunningconceptsdataastronomyhistorysciencephilosophytemperatureyoung scientistsgreenhouseoceanographyantarcticco2genealogyiceArcticatmospherepseudosciencesea levelspectatingsstbiologyexperimentsice agemediarecommendationsscientiststechnologytravelcomputersearthquakeelementsengineeringevolutionice sheetinternationalnewsopportunitiesunreliablecloudsfaqslakeslaurentidenumericspredictionresearch discussionsatellitesMore Grumbine ScienceThoughts and notes on science from another blogging Grumbine.http://moregrumbinescience.blogspot.com/noreply@blogger.com (Robert Grumbine)Blogger455125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5337555368793819627.post-1457094944507788300Tue, 27 Jun 2017 11:30:00 +00002017-06-27T07:30:04.185-04:00datasatellitesSatellite DataWe've passed the 50th anniversary of the first meteorological satellite*, on to 60! Even though satellites have been used for decades, it's still far from simple to do so. Or, rather, it is much more involved than I used to think. I suppose it shouldn't really have been a surprise. Automated weather stations on earth have plenty of problems, and they're operating at earthly temperatures, near somebody who can fix minor problems if they occur, and do so before they become major problems.<br /><br />By way of my day job (again, I do _not_ speak for my employer), I use satellite data and do so heavily enough that I'm on the mailing list for operational updates about the current status of the satellites, data receiving stations, and other parts of the system between my desk (well, the supercomputer at work) and the satellite.<br /><br />One thing which has really impressed itself on me is that there is far more to satellites than launching them and waiting for lovely data to flow forth. Second is that there must be a large number of very highly skilled people working between the satellite and my desk to ensure that the data flows reliably, at high quality, and in a timely fashion.<br /><br />Fortunately, though I'm about to name some challenges and problems, they're _known_ problems and challenges, with solutions. Engineers don't like leaving problems standing. Problems are things to be solved! So, a few stories:<br /><a name='more'></a>* First story goes back to the dawn of weather satellites. A friend's grandfather was on the team that built and prepared for launch the first weather satellite, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_Infrared_Observation_Satellite" target="_blank">TIROS</a>. It was launched April 1, 1960. That's just normal engineering and science. The story is: The engineers signed their grandkids' names on the inside of the satellite. In addition to the fact that I know one of the grandkids, I like this because it's a reminder that science and engineering are done by people. We may well have kids and grandkids.<br /><br />Geostationary satellites, now including the GOES-16 which has recently starting to give us data, have a host of challenges. If life and the universe were simple, geostationary would be easy. Launch your satellite in to an orbit that takes just as long to complete as it takes the earth to rotate. Easy, right? Well, not exactly. One challenge is, the earth is not the only body in the solar system. The sun and moon act to pull the satellite away from that orbit. On average, over the course of a year and month, respectively, those pulls average out to something closer to zero. But we want our observations from a geo_stationary_ satellite, not a geo-more-or-less-close-to-the-more-or-less-standard-position satellite.<br /><br />That means the satellite has to have thrusters to keep the orbit exactly as desired. From time to time, then, there will be 'station keeping' maneuvers, where the thrusters are fired to keep the satellite in place. You also have to maintain the thrusters. That means that, from time to time, you have to flush them. Since the thrusters send out a gas which has a temperature, and the satellite is mainly observing earth's atmosphere -- a gas with a temperature -- you also have to halt the observations during the station keeping or flush. You also have to warn all your users that data will halt for a time, and name what that time will be.<br /><br />A geostationary satellite sits over the equator. At the spring and fall equinoxes, so does the sun. That means that twice a year, around the equinoxes, there is an <a href="http://www.ospo.noaa.gov/Operations/GOES/eclipse.html" target="_blank">eclipse of the satellite</a>. The satellite is solar-powered, in the main, which means that it has to run on batteries-only for up to 72 minutes a day. It has batteries to carry it over, but it does mean it's a period when the satellite has only one power source. If there's a glitch, no data. The close earth-sun-satellite alignment means that there's a risk of the sun hitting satellite sensors directly. Since they're designed for seeing the much fainter light reflected off the earth, this poses a different sensor hazard. Again, management of the satellite and warn the users.<br /><br />The geostationary satellites have another challenge to face. They can be in sunlight for many hours at a time. Great for the solar cells and battery charging. But it means that the satellite can get much hotter in some parts than others. And the satellite is trying to observe subtle changes in temperature from the earth, which can be contaminated by the satellite getting hot. One way to help reduce this and related issues is the '<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtbQ3SPVZmU" target="_blank">yaw flip maneuver</a>', where the satellite is flipped over.<br /><br />Lest you think that we should quit using geostationary satellites because they have such awful issues, there are issues for any satellite. For any satellite, there's the sun. The sun emits not just light, but radio waves, solar wind, solar flares, and has other activity. Any and all of them can interfere with satellite operations. By my eyeball estimate from the mailing list, radio frequency interference is the most common of these issues. So, again, users (like me) have to be warned that there are times approaching where data quality may drop, or data receipt could even be interrupted.<br /><br />Also an any satellite issue is finding out where it is pointing. Either the satellite is far away (about 36,000 km from the earth for geostationary, about 22,000 miles), or it is moving fast (about 7.8 km/sec, 5 miles per second for polar orbiters). Both make it challenging to say where, exactly, the satellite is looking when it takes an observation. Since we want high resolution information -- recent satellites have image/viewing pixels about 500 meters across (about 5 football fields or 3 city blocks) -- we need to know where the satellite is looking to within that much. Preferably we'd know the aim to much finer precision than the size of its viewing pixel. One way to do this is to use <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_tracker" target="_blank">star trackers.</a>&nbsp;But, of course, sometimes a star tracker degrades and you have to adapt.<br /><br />Weather stations on the earth periodically get calibrated. The simplest version is, you take your well-calibrated thermometer out to where the weather station is and compare your well-calibrated thermometer to the thermometer in the weather station. If they differ, you replace the one in the weather station, or at least make a note of how much it is wrong by and send that message out. For satellites ... well, nobody gets to go out and do this kind of calibration. (I'd volunteer!) So there has to be something on-board that can be used for the calibration of the satellite observations. There are two kinds of calibration (that I've been introduced to) -- observe deep space (a 'cold target' calibration), where there should be very nearly zero energy coming in (blackbody temperature of 2.7 K), and observe a target ('hot target') that is near earth temperature, whose temperature you know because you make it be this (say by running a known current through a known resistor and heating it up to somewhere around 288 K).&nbsp;Then, of course, you have to take some time to carry out that calibration. During the calibration period, you can't produce useful data. You're generating data that ensures the other observations mean what you think they do, or that let you decipher the degradation that time, environment, micrometeroids, and so forth have wrought on your satellite instrument.<br /><br />The second family of satellites I use are polar orbiters. This doesn't mean that they orbit at the earth's poles, which would be very convenient for me as a polar scientist. It merely means that they are in basically circular low earth orbits which approach the pole. It doesn't have to be a close approach -- one never got closer than 55 degrees from the pole (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropical_Rainfall_Measuring_Mission" target="_blank">TRMM</a>).<br /><br />Nevertheless, the sun and moon are still out there, and still affect the orbit. You could just let the satellite's orbit drift. But there is usually a purpose for selecting a particular orbit, and moving away from it means a loss of quality in the data for that purpose. So, as with geostationary satellites, there are maneuvers to keep the orbit right. One satellite last fall (<a href="https://sealevel.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/jason3/" target="_blank">Jason-3</a>) had an orbital maneuver which involved changing the semi-major axis by 0.01113 km, in an orbit about 1300 km from the earth. Since the observations people like me use it for are measured to a precision of 0.00001 km, and 0.001 is considered a huge change, this was a very large, important, orbital maneuver.<br /><br />All this contributes to why there's a saying: Everyone _except_ the person who collected it believes the data.http://moregrumbinescience.blogspot.com/2017/06/satellite-data.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Robert Grumbine)7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5337555368793819627.post-8824194974089896352Thu, 26 Jan 2017 12:30:00 +00002017-01-26T07:30:11.176-05:00politicsMarch for scienceDates to be determined, but there is an effort developing to have a march for science in the US.&nbsp; There's a <a href="https://www.facebook.com/marchforscience/?fref=ts" target="_blank">facebook group</a>, and facebook messenger at @marchforscience, twitter as @ScienceMarchDC, and the <a href="http://www.scientistsmarchonwashington.com/" target="_blank">main web site</a>.&nbsp; Things are evolving rapidly, having started very recently and now being over 90,000 in the facebook group.&nbsp; One change being that it has moved from being a march by scientists to being a march for science.<br /><br />Something which occurs to me as useful to know is senators and representatives whose states or districts have large numbers of scientists or companies which do large amounts of science or contracting.&nbsp; Some which occur to me:<br /><br /><u>Some Large Centers</u><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><u>(Places, Senators, Congressperson) </u></div>NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD -- Chris van Hollen, Ben Cardin --&nbsp; Steny Hoyer (MD-5)<br />NOAA Headquarters, Silver Spring, MD -- Chris van Hollen, Ben Cardin -- ?Jeremy Raskin<br />Argonne National Lab, IL --<br />NASA Marshall, Huntsville, AL -- <br />NASA Ames, CA --<br />NASA Johnson, Houston, TX --<br />Los Alamos National Lab, Los Alamos, NM --<br />National Hurricane Center, Miami, FL --<br />National Severe Storms Laboratory, Norman, OK --<br />National Climatic Data Center, Asheville, NC --<br />Center for Disease Control, Atlanta, GA --<br /><br /><u>Companies that build earth satellites:</u><br />Boeing (HQ in Seattle, WA, but many other offices) --<br />Lockheed Martin (HQ in Bethesda, MD, ditto) -- Chris van Hollen, Ben Cardin -- <br />Orbital ATK (HQ Dulles, VA, ditto) --<br />Space Systems Loral (HQ Palo Alto, CA, ditto)<br /><br /><u>Biomed/Biotech/Pharmaceuticals</u><br /><u>Computers/Technology</u><br /><u>...</u><br /><br />I've missed many areas, please add to my list.&nbsp; Also, please work on adding to the list of states and congressional districts.&nbsp; I expect that every state and most congressional districts have at least one large employer which depends on science.&nbsp; It helps to have names and places.<u> </u>http://moregrumbinescience.blogspot.com/2017/01/march-for-science.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Robert Grumbine)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5337555368793819627.post-5219401175025787335Mon, 02 May 2016 11:30:00 +00002016-05-02T07:30:30.081-04:00readingRecent ReadingIf you hadn't noticed last time I wrote about my reading, I enjoy reading old books, and books about old things.&nbsp; One of the interesting, to me, things about math/science/engineering is that it is incremental.&nbsp; Each generation builds on what the preceding generations learned or accomplished.&nbsp; Related truth is that I can read some of the best work from all people, across all of time.&nbsp; Books are my time machine.<br /><br />Richard J. Gillings, Mathematics in the Time of the Pharoahs, Dover Books.&nbsp;<br /><br />Ed. T. L. Heath, The Works of Archimedes, Dover Books.<br /><br />Tacitus, The Agricola and the Germania, Penguin Classics.<br /><br />Craig Martin, Renaissance Meteorology: Pomponazzi to Descartes, Johns Hopkins University Press.<br /><br />A. S. Kompaneyets, Theoretical Physics, Dover Books.<br /><br />Michael W. Shaw, Kids and Teachers, Tardigrade Science Project Book, Fresh Squeezed Publishing.<br /><br /><a name='more'></a>A few thoughts.&nbsp; One is, I do like Dover books (www.doverpublications.com).&nbsp; In keeping with my interests across all time and topic, Dover re-publishes books across time and topic.&nbsp; Also, they make relatively inexpensive editions, which makes my wallet happy.&nbsp; They also have many other types of publication, including crafts, children's books, literary classics, coloring books, and others.&nbsp; Alas, I don't get commission.&nbsp; I'm sure that's an oversight on their part.<br /><br />Math in the Time of the Pharoahs, well, mathematicians 3000+ years ago were quite good.&nbsp; I'm not surprised myself.&nbsp; The pyramids, and, more so, the kingdom's accounting and surveying, required a significant knowledge of mathematics.&nbsp; In Gillings' book, you get a view of the work the ancient Egyptian mathematicians did, and how they did it.&nbsp; People who aren't fond of fractions might appreciate the Egyptian solution to their existence -- have to have fractions, but all (except 2/3) fractions are written as 1 over something.&nbsp; You then deal with fractions by way of some tables on how to add, for example, 1/3 plus 1/6 (which is the special 2/3).&nbsp;<br /><br />More significantly, the conception of proof was different then versus today, or with the classical Greeks (call it 1000-2000 years more recent, something like 400 BC).&nbsp; This is something to spend some time appreciating.&nbsp; When I was a college Freshman, I laughed some at a course a friend was taking, titled something like 'standards of proof in mathematics'.&nbsp; But then he explained how this gets to be a challenging mathematical and philosophical issue.&nbsp; Does the fact that the Egyptians of ca. 2000 BC had a different idea of what constituted a proof than the Greeks of 400 BC mean that they didn't 'really' 'prove' anything?&nbsp; Some moderns seem to think so, but read the book.&nbsp; I think Gillings makes a good case that the Egyptians were making solid proofs millennia before the Greeks.<br /><br />Speaking, however, of the Greeks, one of the greatest of the classical Greek mathematicians, and of classical Greek scientists, was Archimedes of Syracuse.&nbsp; In this book, you have a chance to see him executing his ideas in his own way.&nbsp; It's a very different manner than you'd see similar topics addressed today, which is one of the challenges in reading him fairly.&nbsp; But, it's well worth making the effort.&nbsp; As you do, you'll see a truly inventive mind executing very creative mathematics.&nbsp; One item I'll be taking up as an independent post is Archimedes' use of Eudoxus' method of exhaustion, or, as I'll take it, method of successive approximations.&nbsp; In different vein, making proofs about three dimensional objects (spheres, cones, ...) using two dimensional methods.<br /><br />Having written documents for things is rather a restriction.&nbsp; Or at least insisting on it is.&nbsp; One of the few sources on who was about in non-Roman Europe during the period of the Roman Empire is Tacitus.&nbsp; You'll see some familiar names, but some fluidity in representation.&nbsp; For the Romans, any of the non-Romans were 'Germania'.&nbsp; You might want to translate that as Germans, but the Lithuanians (Fenni in Tacitus) aren't what we'd consider Germans.&nbsp; Still, an insight to the historiography and knowledge of the time.&nbsp; Neither are what we consider today.<br /><br />In the Renaissance Meteorology, you have a chance to approach the questions and issues of what is meteorology and what would be evidence or proof about ideas regarding weather.&nbsp; One of the crucial issues was, in the early period, since God is responsible for weather; what would be evidence against God?&nbsp; This got solved, in time, by reframing the issue as one of what was evidence about the natural world (meaning the world as God allowed it to evolve in this very Christian western Europe).&nbsp; Even then, weather being what it is, what kinds of things could be evidence, and how much could you trust them?&nbsp;<br /><br />Last two books are far more modern, and wildly different.<br /><br />In Theoretical Physics, you've got a nice summary of theoretical physics.&nbsp; Interesting and comprehensive.&nbsp; But you want to be comfortable with your multivariate calculus and partial differential equations.<br /><br />The Tardigrade book is suitable for parents and children, as you might hope from the title.&nbsp; I'm carrying out some of the experiments myself.&nbsp; I currently have a Tardigrade farm on my desk.&nbsp; Or is that Tardigrade herd?&nbsp; Sloth?&nbsp; Anyhow, some microphotographs might be showing up.&nbsp; (Microscope attachment for phone cameras is a wonderful thing).http://moregrumbinescience.blogspot.com/2016/05/recent-reading.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Robert Grumbine)2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5337555368793819627.post-3013348353147750488Sun, 17 Apr 2016 16:30:00 +00002016-04-17T12:30:13.733-04:00data2016 Tough on Sea Ice SatellitesThe last several weeks have been hard on the satellites people like me use most for determining sea ice coverage.&nbsp; We use passive microwave instruments on a number of different satellites.&nbsp; The 'passive' in its name means that it doesn't emit microwaves.&nbsp; It just sits back and collects the emissions from where it's looking.&nbsp; In this, the instrument is rather like our eyes.<br /><br />Different centers use different instruments and different combinations of instruments.&nbsp; The main ones are:<br />SSMI on DMSP F-15, launched on 12 December 1999 (pushing 17 years!)<br />SSMI-S on DMSP F-16, launched 18 October 2003 (pushing 13!)<br />SSMI-S on DMSP F-17, 4 November 2006 (almost 10!)<br />SSMI-S on DMSP F-18, 18 October 2009 (approaching 7)<br />SSMI-S on DMSP F-19, 3 April 2014 (only 2)<br />AMSR2 on GCOM-W, 18 May 2012 (nearly 4)<br /><br />A word about the names.&nbsp; SSMI is Special Sensor Microwave Imager.&nbsp; 'Imager' is the key word.&nbsp; With satellites, 'imager' means that the instrument is designed to be able to see (mostly) the surface.&nbsp; Handy for us sea ice people.&nbsp; DMSP is the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program -- the US Department of Defense operates these satellites.&nbsp; SSMI-S (or SSMI-SU) is the SSMI -- Sounder (or Sounding Unit).&nbsp; Means that in addition to the regular SSMI observing of the surface, it also carries some sensors that can do 'sounding'.&nbsp; Sounding is to see what's going on in the atmosphere rather than mostly the surface.&nbsp; (Name comes from the weather balloons -- which collect data known as soundings.)&nbsp; AMSR is Advanced Microwave Sounding Radiometer.&nbsp; It's operated by the Japanese Space Agency (JAXA).&nbsp; The advance is that it is able to see more detail and the much older designs in the SSMI and SSMI-S.&nbsp;<br /><br />So, to our stories of woe.&nbsp; All of these instruments are designed for 5 years' operation.&nbsp; F-15 giving (mostly) good data after 17 years is spectacular for this type of satellite.&nbsp; Notice that most of these potential data sources are already past their design life.&nbsp; Since February 2016:<br /><br />F-16: the sounding channels quit working early February<br />F-17: April 5th data quality impaired on one of the surface imaging channels, data volumes sent are greatly reduced.<br />F-18: Mostly ok, but reduced volume of data.&nbsp; Many orbits' data not making it through.<br />F-19: Data ceased flowing February 2<br />AMSR2: Data outage afternoon of April 15th through morning of April 16th.<br /><br />F-15, the oldest of the crowd, is still sending basically normal data volumes at basically normal volumes.<br /><br />So, hiccups all around the sea ice analysis world.&nbsp; The NSIDC was using only the F-17 SSMI-S, so has to rebuild their system to work with another instrument.&nbsp; The AMSR2 temporary outage affected some centers seriously as they relied only on that instrument.&nbsp; The US NWS uses both F-15 and F-17, and so far seems to be ok.&nbsp; I haven't checked the operating status of the OSI-SAF sea ice (European analysis).&nbsp; If I remember correctly, they also use more than one instrument, so should also be ok.<br /><br />More gory details below the fold ...<br /><a name='more'></a>Even the instruments which are providing mostly good data are imperfect.&nbsp; F-15's data at 22 GHz is corrupted.&nbsp; Most sea ice analysis systems use this for weather filtering.&nbsp; (I constructed a different weather filter to avoid this bad channel at my workplace.)&nbsp; F-16 hasn't been as widely used in the sea ice world as 15 or 17, so losing it makes for less difficulty immediately, but does mean that we have fewer options to move away from 15 or 17.&nbsp; F-17 is/was widely used, so many places are having difficulty.&nbsp; F-18 has a very bad channel at 150 GHz, but the other imaging channels seem to be ok.&nbsp; F-19 should be the best of the group, being the youngest, but quit providing data.&nbsp;<br /><br />Aside from the April 15-16 outage, AMSR2 is or should still be the best -- still within its design life, and with a more advanced design.&nbsp; A lot of people in the sea ice world are probably hoping strongly that this outage is a temporary thing, not to be repeated.<br /><br />The challenge about using a different instrument is that they're not identical.&nbsp; If you're trying to study climate, as many centers are, small differences in the details of what the sensor sees can make for large changes in the trends you'd fine in a sea ice analysis.&nbsp; So you have to work, hard, to make sure that the analysis you get from AMSR2, for instance, is consistent with what you were getting from F-17 for the last several years.&nbsp; This is what the NSIDC is likely doing right now.&nbsp; Since my professional concern is more weather, I don't have quite the issue.&nbsp; But I still need data to work with, and losing perhaps 2 potential backups is not cheery.&nbsp; Losing half the data from one of the satellites I already use is also hot happy.&nbsp; And, although my quality control procedures (or those which are cutting my supply in half) are doing ok for now, it's uncomfortable to know that my data supply is even less good than it used to be.<br /><br />It's for reasons like this that all the people I know who work with data agree immediately with the comment "All data have problems."http://moregrumbinescience.blogspot.com/2016/04/2016-tough-on-sea-ice-satellites.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Robert Grumbine)6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5337555368793819627.post-4418592345767073706Fri, 15 Apr 2016 12:00:00 +00002016-04-15T08:00:12.911-04:00politicsAutism Awareness Month, 2016A heads up that it's autism awareness month again.&nbsp; Autism hasn't changed much in the past year, so I don't have much new to say.&nbsp; My <a href="http://moregrumbinescience.blogspot.com/2015/04/autism-awareness-month-2015.html" target="_blank">2015 post</a> covers what I have to say myself.&nbsp; In brief: people are people, including autistic people.&nbsp; People are all similar, because we're people.&nbsp; And people are all different, because we are people.&nbsp; All of this applies to autistic people too, no more, no less.http://moregrumbinescience.blogspot.com/2016/04/autism-awareness-month-2016.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Robert Grumbine)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5337555368793819627.post-4157814667588489628Wed, 13 Apr 2016 11:30:00 +00002016-04-13T07:30:02.406-04:00readingChapter one and Ted Fujita<a href="https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=author%3A%22t+t+fujita%22&amp;btnG=&amp;hl=en&amp;as_sdt=1%2C21&amp;as_vis=1" target="_blank">Dr. Tetsuya Fujita</a>, a.k.a. Ted, a.k.a. Mr Tornado was a meteorologist who spent most of his career at the University of Chicago.&nbsp; When I was in graduate school, I was down the hall from him and a friend (Eric) was one of his students.&nbsp; One day, Eric told me a Ted story.<br /><br />Dr. Fujita held up a book on fluid dynamics (one of the central subjects for studying meteorology) and said to Eric "See this book?&nbsp; I only know chapter one."&nbsp; (maybe it was 'use'.&nbsp; Been a few years.)&nbsp; At the time, I thought it was more than a little exaggerated.&nbsp; And it probably did have a fair amount of exaggeration (Ted wasn't above such things).&nbsp; But, as I've continued my career and studies, I see more and more truth and wisdom in that comment.<br /><br />I don't know about that particular book.&nbsp; But as I re-open math and science books I read years or decades ago, I'm continuing to find meaning and importance very early in the text.&nbsp; Not because I didn't learn enough of the early chapters to do well in class and tests, or to be able to apply the knowledge in later years at work.&nbsp; Rather, because as I've worked more on the subject, or learned more outside it, I see that there are more and more connections to 'chapter one' material.&nbsp; In that case, there's a lot of merit to looking back at chapter one and seeing how much deeper a knowledge I (you too, probably) can get from the later viewing.http://moregrumbinescience.blogspot.com/2016/04/chapter-one-and-ted-fujita.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Robert Grumbine)3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5337555368793819627.post-7706738370408259560Mon, 11 Apr 2016 11:30:00 +00002016-04-11T07:30:20.580-04:00mathematicsreadingRecent readingI'm a bookaholic, I confess.&nbsp; I have far more books than are strictly needed.&nbsp; And I'm acquiring more essentially all the time.&nbsp; (The freebies available via google, ibooks, kindle, nook, and many other venues don't exactly slow down my acquisition.)&nbsp; On the other hand, I do eventually read them.&nbsp; From recent (-ish) reading:<br /><br /><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Hands-Meteorology-Stories-Theories-Experiments/dp/1878220209/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_2?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1460327038&amp;sr=1-2-fkmr0&amp;keywords=zbignew+sorbjan" target="_blank">Hands on Meteorology by Zbigniew Sorbjan </a>-- a book with something of everything for meteorology and middle school students (or older).&nbsp; Some history, some biography, and a substantial chunk of hands on meteorology.&nbsp; Plenty of experiments that you can do with minimal experience and equipment.&nbsp;<br /><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Street-Fighting-Mathematics-Educated-Guessing-Opportunistic/dp/026251429X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1460327133&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=street-fighting+mathematics" target="_blank"><br /></a><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Street-Fighting-Mathematics-Educated-Guessing-Opportunistic/dp/026251429X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1460327133&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=street-fighting+mathematics" target="_blank">Street-Fighting Mathematics: The Art of Educated Guessing and Opportunistic Problem Solving, Sanjoy Mahajan</a> -- To get through to the end of this book, you'll want at least integral calculus.&nbsp; But I mention it here because a) some of you have that background and b) those who don't: consider the title.&nbsp; You can choose to consider mathematical problem solving as being something like a mixed martial arts, steel cage, match.&nbsp; No holds barred either.&nbsp; While math is often taught as a matter of exactness, and the one and only one correct answer, there's a broad swath in which coming up with a pretty good approximation is an excellent thing.&nbsp; In practice, this is an enormous swath of science*.&nbsp; See also my old post <a href="http://moregrumbinescience.blogspot.com/2008/11/fermi-estimate-challenge.html" target="_blank">Fermi Estimate Challenge</a>.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Native-American-Crafts-Skills-Illustrated/dp/1599213427/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1460327882&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=native+american+crafts+and+skills" target="_blank">Native American Crafts and Skills, 2nd Ed., David Montgomery</a> -- It's easy to make, say, a house when you already have plans, bricks, saws, (pre-cut!) lumber, plumbing, electricity, and so on.&nbsp; But what do you do when you only have stone tools?&nbsp; How about when you also have to make the tools themselves?&nbsp; There's some serious intelligence involved in solving these problems.&nbsp; This book has some of the solutions.&nbsp; In a few cases, such as the shape and orientation of a Tipi, there's also a connection to meteorology and climate.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.amazon.com/About-Climate-Change-Boston-Review/dp/0262018438/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1460328277&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=kerry+emanuel" target="_blank">What We know About Climate Change, Kerry Emanuel</a> -- This is a far smaller book than I expected from the title.&nbsp; It also includes no math.&nbsp; It's a good place to start reading on climate.&nbsp; It won't take you long, and won't bury you in detail or math.<br /><br />More to come ...<br /><br /><br />* Post to come about Ted Fujita, and his 'chapter one' rule.http://moregrumbinescience.blogspot.com/2016/04/recent-reading.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Robert Grumbine)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5337555368793819627.post-1355752355110614191Thu, 21 Jan 2016 02:50:00 +00002016-01-20T21:50:04.955-05:00astronomymathematicsEarth-Sun distance and Chandler Wobble<div class="page" title="Page 3"><div class="section"><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><ol start="14" style="list-style-type: none;"></ol><span style="font-family: &quot;cmr12&quot;; font-size: 12.000000pt;">Continuing from <a href="http://grumbinescience.org/papers/unpub/grumbine_wobble_2014.pdf" target="_blank">The Pacemaker of the Chandler Wobble, Grumbine 2014</a>:</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;cmr12&quot;; font-size: 12.000000pt;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;cmr12&quot;; font-size: 12.000000pt;">The <span style="font-size: small;">Chandler Wobble (CW) is a small variation in the orientation of the earth’s rotat</span></span><span style="font-family: &quot;cmr12&quot;; font-size: small;">ional axis [</span><span style="font-family: &quot;cmti12&quot;; font-size: small;">Chandler</span><span style="font-family: &quot;cmr12&quot;; font-size: small;">, 1891]. It has a period near 433 days [</span><span style="font-family: &quot;cmti12&quot;; font-size: small;">Liao and Zhou</span><span style="font-family: &quot;cmr12&quot;; font-size: small;">, 2004] (0.8435</span><span style="font-family: &quot;cmr12&quot;; font-size: small;">cycles per year, 0.0023095 cycles per day). Some source of energy for the Chandler Wobble</span><span style="font-family: &quot;cmss8&quot;; font-size: small;">&nbsp; </span><span style="font-family: &quot;cmr12&quot;; font-size: small;">must exist because it dies out on a time scale of decades [</span><span style="font-family: &quot;cmti12&quot;; font-size: small;">Munk and MacDonald</span><span style="font-family: &quot;cmr12&quot;; font-size: small;">, 1960] if</span><span style="font-family: &quot;cmss8&quot;; font-size: small;"> </span><span style="font-family: &quot;cmr12&quot;; font-size: small;">energy is not continuingly added. </span><span style="font-family: &quot;cmti12&quot;; font-size: small;">Gross </span><span style="font-family: &quot;cmr12&quot;; font-size: small;">[2000] found that atmosphere-ocean forcing on</span><span style="font-family: &quot;cmr12&quot;; font-size: small;"> the earth’s rotation, computed in an ocean general circulation model driven by observed</span><span style="font-family: &quot;cmss8&quot;; font-size: small;">&nbsp; </span><span style="font-family: &quot;cmr12&quot;; font-size: small;">meteorological parameters, provided that forcing. [</span><span style="font-family: &quot;cmti12&quot;; font-size: small;">O’Connor et al.</span><span style="font-family: &quot;cmr12&quot;; font-size: small;">, 2000] also found wind forcing of the ocean to drive the pole tide. This source was questioned [</span><span style="font-family: &quot;cmti12&quot;; font-size: small;">Wunsch</span><span style="font-family: &quot;cmr12&quot;; font-size: small;">, 2001<span style="font-family: &quot;cmss8&quot;;">]</span></span><span style="font-family: &quot;cmss8&quot;; font-size: small;"> </span><span style="font-family: &quot;cmr12&quot;; font-size: small;">partly on the grounds that the ocean was displaying a very narrow band response, but</span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: &quot;cmss8&quot;;"> </span><span style="font-family: &quot;cmss8&quot;; font-size: 5.000000pt;">there was no reason to believe that the forcing itself was narrow band.</span></span><br /><br />I suggest that the atmosphere-ocean variability near the Chandler Wobble period,<span style="font-family: &quot;cmr12&quot;; font-size: 12.000000pt;"> among others, is paced by variation in earth-sun distance. The earth-sun distance, in </span><span style="font-family: &quot;cmr12&quot;; font-size: 12.000000pt;">addition to annual and semi-annual variations due to the elliptical shape of the earth’s </span><span style="font-family: &quot;cmr12&quot;; font-size: 12.000000pt;">orbit, varies due to perturbations from the moon (29.53 day period and others), Venus </span><span style="font-family: &quot;cmr12&quot;; font-size: 12.000000pt;">(292, 584, 417, 1455, ... days), and Jupiter (399, 199, 439, 489, ... days). The size of </span><span style="font-family: &quot;cmr12&quot;; font-size: 12.000000pt;">these variations is small, the largest being the 29.53 day lunar synodic period (31*10</span><span style="font-family: &quot;cmsy8&quot;; font-size: 8.000000pt; vertical-align: 4.000000pt;">−</span><span style="font-family: &quot;cmr8&quot;; font-size: 8.000000pt; vertical-align: 4.000000pt;">6</span><span style="font-family: &quot;cmr12&quot;; font-size: 12.000000pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;cmr8&quot;;"> </span>Astronomical Units), amounting to approximately 0.08 W/m</span><span style="font-family: &quot;cmr8&quot;; font-size: 8.000000pt; vertical-align: 4.000000pt;">2 </span><span style="font-family: &quot;cmr12&quot;; font-size: 12.000000pt;">on a plane perpendicular</span><span style="font-family: &quot;cmss8&quot;; font-size: 5.000000pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: &quot;cmr12&quot;; font-size: 12.000000pt;">to the sun at the top of the atmosphere. See Table 1 for more precise periods and the</span><span style="font-family: &quot;cmr12&quot;; font-size: 12.000000pt;"> amplitudes of distance variations corresponding to them.</span><br /><br />Horizons [<span style="font-family: &quot;cmti12&quot;; font-size: 12.000000pt;">Giorgini et al.</span><span style="font-family: &quot;cmr12&quot;; font-size: 12.000000pt;">, 1996] was used to provided 6-hourly earth-sun distance and</span><span style="font-family: &quot;cmss8&quot;; font-size: 5.000000pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: &quot;cmr12&quot;; font-size: 12.000000pt;">osculating elements for 1 Jan 1962 00 UTC through 31 Dec 2008 18 UTC. Table 1 was </span><span style="font-family: &quot;cmr12&quot;; font-size: 12.000000pt;">derived by harmonic analysis of those data at precise frequencies to determine purely cyclic variations in the earth-sun distance. The leading terms are, of course, the annual </span><span style="font-family: &quot;cmss8&quot;; font-size: 5.000000pt;"></span><span style="font-family: &quot;cmr12&quot;; font-size: 12.000000pt;">and semi-annual cycles from the elliptical orbit. Following this, however, are perturbations in Earth-Sun distance due to the moon, Venus, and Jupiter. Note that the orbital elements are not precisely locked to the periods given. The </span><span style="font-family: &quot;cmss8&quot;; font-size: 5.000000pt;"></span><span style="font-family: &quot;cmr12&quot;; font-size: 12.000000pt;">osculating (instantaneous) orbital elements vary; the osculating year varies from 364 to 366 days, for instance [</span><span style="font-family: &quot;cmti12&quot;; font-size: 12.000000pt;">Giorgini et al.</span><span style="font-family: &quot;cmr12&quot;; font-size: 12.000000pt;">, 1996]. Consequently, there are residuals near </span><span style="font-family: &quot;cmss8&quot;; font-size: 5.000000pt;"></span><span style="font-family: &quot;cmr12&quot;; font-size: 12.000000pt;">the annual period. But they are far smaller than the main line. The anomalistic year, 365.259635 days [</span><span style="font-family: &quot;cmti12&quot;; font-size: 12.000000pt;">Observatory and Observatory</span><span style="font-family: &quot;cmr12&quot;; font-size: 12.000000pt;">, 2001], is the period between successive perihelia. This has been found to be the appropriate period for climate temperature analysis rather than the tropical (vernal equinox to vernal equinox) year [</span><span style="font-family: &quot;cmti12&quot;; font-size: 12.000000pt;">Thomson</span><span style="font-family: &quot;cmr12&quot;; font-size: 12.000000pt;">, 1995]. </span><span style="font-family: &quot;cmss8&quot;; font-size: 5.000000pt;"></span><span style="font-family: &quot;cmr12&quot;; font-size: 12.000000pt;">As we will be drawing the conclusion that earth-sun distance is important, even for small variations, the anomalistic year is the self-consistent one to use here.&nbsp;</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;cmr12&quot;; font-size: 12.000000pt;">Previous analyses of orbital variation at relatively high frequency (high compared to, </span><span style="font-family: &quot;cmss8&quot;; font-size: 5.000000pt;"></span><span style="font-family: &quot;cmr12&quot;; font-size: 12.000000pt;">e.g., Milankovitch periods [</span><span style="font-family: &quot;cmti12&quot;; font-size: 12.000000pt;">Milankovich</span><span style="font-family: &quot;cmr12&quot;; font-size: 12.000000pt;">, 1941]) have used annual average orbital parame</span><span style="font-family: &quot;cmss8&quot;; font-size: 5.000000pt;"></span><span style="font-family: &quot;cmr12&quot;; font-size: 12.000000pt;">ters [</span><span style="font-family: &quot;cmti12&quot;; font-size: 12.000000pt;">Borisenkov et al.</span><span style="font-family: &quot;cmr12&quot;; font-size: 12.000000pt;">, 1985; </span><span style="font-family: &quot;cmti12&quot;; font-size: 12.000000pt;">Loutre et al.</span><span style="font-family: &quot;cmr12&quot;; font-size: 12.000000pt;">, 1992], precluding them from examining periods shorter than 2 years and aliasing some of the periods examined here. Also, those works were examining the earth’s tilt, rather than earth-sun distance. Gravitational torques have been examined previously as the main driver of the Chandler Wobble and rejected [</span><span style="font-family: &quot;cmti12&quot;; font-size: 12.000000pt;">Munk and MacDonald </span><span style="font-family: &quot;cmr12&quot;; font-size: 12.000000pt;">, 1960; </span><span style="font-family: &quot;cmti12&quot;; font-size: 12.000000pt;">Lambeck </span><span style="font-family: &quot;cmr12&quot;; font-size: 12.000000pt;">, 1980], which means only non-gravitational ex</span><span style="font-family: &quot;cmss8&quot;; font-size: 5.000000pt;"></span><span style="font-family: &quot;cmr12&quot;; font-size: 12.000000pt;">ternal forces, such as earth-sun distance, force Chandler Wobble at these periods, if any </span><span style="font-family: &quot;cmss8&quot;; font-size: 5.000000pt;"></span><span style="font-family: &quot;cmr12&quot;; font-size: 12.000000pt;">external sources do.&nbsp;</span><br /><br /><a name='more'></a>Table 1: <br /><br /><style type="text/css">P { margin-bottom: 0.08in; }</style> <br /><div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; page-break-before: always;"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Table 1: Summary of frequency (cycles per tropical year), amplitude, phase, period and origins.</span></span></div><div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The code lists the number of cycles per lunar sidereal month, per year (here I list both the tropical year and anomalistic year – tropical year is used for motions involving the moon, Jupiter, and Venus), Venus's sidereal year, and Jupiter's sidereal year, respectively (M T A V J).</span></span></div><div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></div><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="width: 549px;"> <colgroup><col width="96"></col> <col width="80"></col> <col width="53"></col> <col width="97"></col> <col width="30"></col> <col width="42"></col> <col width="42"></col> <col width="46"></col> <col width="62"></col> </colgroup><tbody><tr valign="TOP"> <td width="96"><div align="CENTER"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Frequency</span></span></div></td> <td width="80"><div align="CENTER"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Amplitude</span></span></div></td> <td width="53"><div align="CENTER"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Phase</span></span></div></td> <td width="97"><div align="CENTER"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Period</span></span></div></td> <td colspan="5" width="222"><div align="CENTER">Code</div></td> </tr><tr valign="TOP"> <td width="96"><div align="CENTER"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">(cpy)</span></span></div></td> <td width="80"><div align="CENTER"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">(10<sup>-6 </sup>AU) </span></span> </div></td> <td width="53"><div align="CENTER"></div></td> <td width="97"><div align="CENTER"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">(dy)</span></span></div></td> <td width="30"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">M</span></span></div></td> <td width="42"><div align="RIGHT">T</div></td> <td width="42"><div align="RIGHT">A</div></td> <td width="46"><div align="RIGHT">V</div></td> <td width="62"><div align="RIGHT">J</div></td> </tr><tr valign="TOP"> <td width="96"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">0.99995</span></span></div></td> <td width="80"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">16712.75</span></span></div></td> <td width="53"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">-177.9</span></span></div></td> <td width="97"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">365.260</span></span></div></td> <td width="30"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">0</span></span></div></td> <td width="42"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">0</span></span></div></td> <td width="42"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">1</span></span></div></td> <td width="46"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">0</span></span></div></td> <td width="62"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">0</span></span></div></td> </tr><tr valign="TOP"> <td width="96"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">1.99990</span></span></div></td> <td width="80"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">139.69</span></span></div></td> <td width="53"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">-175.8</span></span></div></td> <td width="97"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">182.630</span></span></div></td> <td width="30"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">0</span></span></div></td> <td width="42"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">0</span></span></div></td> <td width="42"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">2</span></span></div></td> <td width="46"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">0</span></span></div></td> <td width="62"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">0</span></span></div></td> </tr><tr valign="TOP"> <td width="96"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">12.36825</span></span></div></td> <td width="80"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">30.84</span></span></div></td> <td width="53"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">63.5</span></span></div></td> <td width="97"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">29.531</span></span></div></td> <td width="30"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">1</span></span></div></td> <td width="42"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">-1</span></span></div></td> <td width="42"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">0</span></span></div></td> <td width="46"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">0</span></span></div></td> <td width="62"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">0</span></span></div></td> </tr><tr valign="TOP"> <td width="96"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">0.91566</span></span></div></td> <td width="80"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">15.92</span></span></div></td> <td width="53"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">-143.5</span></span></div></td> <td width="97"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">398.884</span></span></div></td> <td width="30"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">0</span></span></div></td> <td width="42"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">1</span></span></div></td> <td width="42"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">0</span></span></div></td> <td width="46"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">0</span></span></div></td> <td width="62"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">-1</span></span></div></td> </tr><tr valign="TOP"> <td width="96"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">1.25100</span></span></div></td> <td width="80"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">15.63</span></span></div></td> <td width="53"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">31</span></span></div></td> <td width="97"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">291.961</span></span></div></td> <td width="30"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">0</span></span></div></td> <td width="42"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">-2</span></span></div></td> <td width="42"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">0</span></span></div></td> <td width="46"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">2</span></span></div></td> <td width="62"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">0</span></span></div></td> </tr><tr valign="TOP"> <td width="96"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">1.83132</span></span></div></td> <td width="80"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">9.27</span></span></div></td> <td width="53"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">-99.7</span></span></div></td> <td width="97"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">199.442</span></span></div></td> <td width="30"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">0</span></span></div></td> <td width="42"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">2</span></span></div></td> <td width="42"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">0</span></span></div></td> <td width="46"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">0</span></span></div></td> <td width="62"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">-2</span></span></div></td> </tr><tr valign="TOP"> <td width="96"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">0.62550</span></span></div></td> <td width="80"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">5.12</span></span></div></td> <td width="53"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">16.2</span></span></div></td> <td width="97"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">583.923</span></span></div></td> <td width="30"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">0</span></span></div></td> <td width="42"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">-1</span></span></div></td> <td width="42"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">0</span></span></div></td> <td width="46"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">1</span></span></div></td> <td width="62"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">0</span></span></div></td> </tr><tr valign="TOP"> <td width="96"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">0.87653</span></span></div></td> <td width="80"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">4.79</span></span></div></td> <td width="53"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">107.5</span></span></div></td> <td width="97"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">416.690</span></span></div></td> <td width="30"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">0</span></span></div></td> <td width="42"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">-4</span></span></div></td> <td width="42"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">0</span></span></div></td> <td width="46"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">3</span></span></div></td> <td width="62"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">0</span></span></div></td> </tr><tr valign="TOP"> <td width="96"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">0.83136</span></span></div></td> <td width="80"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">2.93</span></span></div></td> <td width="53"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">-137.3</span></span></div></td> <td width="97"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">439.332</span></span></div></td> <td width="30"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">0</span></span></div></td> <td width="42"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">1</span></span></div></td> <td width="42"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">0</span></span></div></td> <td width="46"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">0</span></span></div></td> <td width="62"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">-2</span></span></div></td> </tr><tr valign="TOP"> <td width="96"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">0.08430</span></span></div></td> <td width="80"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">2.58</span></span></div></td> <td width="53"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">70.2</span></span></div></td> <td width="97"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">4332.589</span></span></div></td> <td width="30"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">0</span></span></div></td> <td width="42"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">0</span></span></div></td> <td width="42"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">0</span></span></div></td> <td width="46"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">0</span></span></div></td> <td width="62"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">1</span></span></div></td> </tr><tr valign="TOP"> <td width="96"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">1.87649</span></span></div></td> <td width="80"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">2.54</span></span></div></td> <td width="53"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">-136</span></span></div></td> <td width="97"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">194.641</span></span></div></td> <td width="30"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">0</span></span></div></td> <td width="42"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">-3</span></span></div></td> <td width="42"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">0</span></span></div></td> <td width="46"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">3</span></span></div></td> <td width="62"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">0</span></span></div></td> </tr><tr valign="TOP"> <td width="96"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">2.99986</span></span></div></td> <td width="80"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">1.76</span></span></div></td> <td width="53"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">-173.9</span></span></div></td> <td width="97"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">121.753</span></span></div></td> <td width="30"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">0</span></span></div></td> <td width="42"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">0</span></span></div></td> <td width="42"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">3</span></span></div></td> <td width="46"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">0</span></span></div></td> <td width="62"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">0</span></span></div></td> </tr><tr valign="TOP"> <td width="96"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">1.75306</span></span></div></td> <td width="80"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">1.54</span></span></div></td> <td width="53"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">-98.5</span></span></div></td> <td width="97"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">208.345</span></span></div></td> <td width="30"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">0</span></span></div></td> <td width="42"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">-8</span></span></div></td> <td width="42"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">0</span></span></div></td> <td width="46"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">6</span></span></div></td> <td width="62"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">0</span></span></div></td> </tr><tr valign="TOP"> <td width="96"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">0.25103</span></span></div></td> <td width="80"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">1.53</span></span></div></td> <td width="53"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">-145.4</span></span></div></td> <td width="97"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">1454.951</span></span></div></td> <td width="30"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">0</span></span></div></td> <td width="42"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">-3</span></span></div></td> <td width="42"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">0</span></span></div></td> <td width="46"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">2</span></span></div></td> <td width="62"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">0</span></span></div></td> </tr><tr valign="TOP"> <td width="96"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">2.50199</span></span></div></td> <td width="80"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">0.91</span></span></div></td> <td width="53"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">61.5</span></span></div></td> <td width="97"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">145.981</span></span></div></td> <td width="30"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">0</span></span></div></td> <td width="42"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">-4</span></span></div></td> <td width="42"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">0</span></span></div></td> <td width="46"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">4</span></span></div></td> <td width="62"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">0</span></span></div></td> </tr><tr valign="TOP"> <td width="96"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">0.74706</span></span></div></td> <td width="80"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">0.64</span></span></div></td> <td width="53"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">146.4</span></span></div></td> <td width="97"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">488.908</span></span></div></td> <td width="30"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">0</span></span></div></td> <td width="42"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">1</span></span></div></td> <td width="42"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">0</span></span></div></td> <td width="46"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">0</span></span></div></td> <td width="62"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">-3</span></span></div></td> </tr><tr valign="TOP"> <td width="96"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">13.36821</span></span></div></td> <td width="80"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">0.57</span></span></div></td> <td width="53"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">-114.4</span></span></div></td> <td width="97"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">27.322</span></span></div></td> <td width="30"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">1</span></span></div></td> <td width="42"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">0</span></span></div></td> <td width="42"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">0</span></span></div></td> <td width="46"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">0</span></span></div></td> <td width="62"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">0</span></span></div></td> </tr><tr valign="TOP"> <td width="96"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">11.36829</span></span></div></td> <td width="80"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">0.56</span></span></div></td> <td width="53"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">61.3</span></span></div></td> <td width="97"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">32.128</span></span></div></td> <td width="30"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">1</span></span></div></td> <td width="42"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">-2</span></span></div></td> <td width="42"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">0</span></span></div></td> <td width="46"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">0</span></span></div></td> <td width="62"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">0</span></span></div></td> </tr><tr valign="TOP"> <td width="96"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">3.12749</span></span></div></td> <td width="80"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">0.37</span></span></div></td> <td width="53"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">-103.8</span></span></div></td> <td width="97"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">116.785</span></span></div></td> <td width="30"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">0</span></span></div></td> <td width="42"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">-5</span></span></div></td> <td width="42"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">0</span></span></div></td> <td width="46"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">5</span></span></div></td> <td width="62"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">0</span></span></div></td> </tr><tr valign="TOP"> <td width="96"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">0.50207</span></span></div></td> <td width="80"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">0.36</span></span></div></td> <td width="53"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">-71.8</span></span></div></td> <td width="97"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">727.476</span></span></div></td> <td width="30"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">0</span></span></div></td> <td width="42"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">-6</span></span></div></td> <td width="42"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">0</span></span></div></td> <td width="46"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">4</span></span></div></td> <td width="62"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">0</span></span></div></td> </tr><tr valign="TOP"> <td width="96"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">3.75299</span></span></div></td> <td width="80"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">0.20</span></span></div></td> <td width="53"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">94.1</span></span></div></td> <td width="97"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">97.320</span></span></div></td> <td width="30"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">0</span></span></div></td> <td width="42"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">-6</span></span></div></td> <td width="42"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">0</span></span></div></td> <td width="46"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">6</span></span></div></td> <td width="62"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">0</span></span></div></td> </tr><tr valign="TOP"> <td width="96"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">0.37446</span></span></div></td> <td width="80"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">0.14</span></span></div></td> <td width="53"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">156.7</span></span></div></td> <td width="97"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">975.374</span></span></div></td> <td width="30"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">0</span></span></div></td> <td width="42"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">2</span></span></div></td> <td width="42"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">0</span></span></div></td> <td width="46"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">-1</span></span></div></td> <td width="62"><div align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">0</span></span></div></td> </tr></tbody></table><div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></div><div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><a href="http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/?horizons" target="_blank">Horizons</a>&nbsp; -- go here for more data.</div><br /></div></div></div></div>http://moregrumbinescience.blogspot.com/2016/01/earth-sun-distance-and-chandler-wobble.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Robert Grumbine)7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5337555368793819627.post-4647680951411700248Tue, 19 Jan 2016 12:30:00 +00002016-01-19T07:30:00.146-05:00datadoing sciencemodellingobservationsoceanographyproject folderscienceThe Pacemaker of the Chandler Wobble<b>Abstract</b>: The Chandler Wobble is one of the largest circumannual periodic or quasi-periodic variations in the earth's orientation.&nbsp; After over a century of searching for its forcing, it was found to be caused by atmospheric circulation and induced ocean circulation and pressure.&nbsp; The question of why there should be such forcing from the atmosphere has remained open. I suggest that variations in earth-sun distance cause this forcing to the atmosphere and thence the ocean.&nbsp; Analysis of earth-sun distance, earth's orientation, and atmospheric winds shows a coherent relationship between the atmosphere and earth orientation at just those periods expected from earth-sun distance variation.&nbsp; As this is a general mechanism, it can be used in examining regular climatic variations on a wide range of periods and for climate parameters other than the earth's orientation.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">-- -- -- -- -- -- --&nbsp;</div><br />That is the abstract for the paper I link to below.&nbsp; It's not a peer-reviewed paper in the sense of being in a peer-reviewed journal. &nbsp; But it has been reviewed by an expert in the field (William P. O'Connor), who was quite favorable. <br /><br />I am posting the idea and paper here.&nbsp; Long past time for the ideas to be discussed.&nbsp; If they're shredded in the blogosphere, so be it.&nbsp; I have quite a bit more than what I've put in the document. Over the next few days and weeks, I'll post more of those additional materials as well.<br /><br /><a href="http://grumbinescience.org/papers/unpub/grumbine_wobble_2014.pdf" target="_blank">The Pacemaker of the Chandler Wobble, Grumbine 2014</a>http://moregrumbinescience.blogspot.com/2016/01/the-pacemaker-of-chandler-wobble.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Robert Grumbine)7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5337555368793819627.post-5887474660938482495Mon, 26 Oct 2015 11:30:00 +00002015-10-26T07:30:01.346-04:00metaBeen a while hasn't itDidn't mean to disappear quite that long, 2.5 months it turns out.&nbsp; Well, I'll be picking up my posting again.&nbsp; In the interim, I've been on vacation in the Peruvian Amazon, picture below, been a manager at work, and generally running around.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/--zxZ-JEg-fY/ViusbryBfcI/AAAAAAAAATU/aegUoK2T7W4/s1600/IMG_2239.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/--zxZ-JEg-fY/ViusbryBfcI/AAAAAAAAATU/aegUoK2T7W4/s320/IMG_2239.jpg" width="239" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;">You probably think of piranha when thinking about the Amazon river.&nbsp;&nbsp; We were on a fishing expedition for piranha.&nbsp; My wife, the pilot, and our guide all caught piranha -- mostly red bellied, but a couple white bellied.&nbsp; Above is my one catch.&nbsp; It is a sardine (about 10", 25 cm).&nbsp; I'm amused, or puzzled, or something.&nbsp; I'm happy about it.&nbsp; It's a reminder of the fact that the world is more involved and weirder than you might think.&nbsp; And a reminder than if there's weirdness to be found, I'll be the one to find it.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-pS4498oer10/VitkQjpLhbI/AAAAAAAAATA/Y2NLmDFqdzA/s1600/IMG_2239.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br /></a></div>Managing, well, I'll go back to a story from college.&nbsp; A friend of mine was a highly talented computer science major who went from starting his bachelor's degree to finishing his master's in 4 years.&nbsp; While we were room mates, he did a group project with the other two top students in the class.&nbsp; If technical skill were the only issue in doing a technical project, this group would have done by far the best.&nbsp; Instead, it was a mediocre project.&nbsp; That's when he, and I by contact, developed an appreciation for good managers.&nbsp; One of their skills is to get the best out of a group of people.&nbsp; So that's my aim.http://moregrumbinescience.blogspot.com/2015/10/been-while-hasnt-it.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Robert Grumbine)2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5337555368793819627.post-70164141752456860Thu, 23 Jul 2015 11:30:00 +00002015-07-23T07:30:02.901-04:00observationsData Horrors"The great tragedy of science -- the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact." &nbsp;Thomas H. Huxley.<br /><br />Sometimes, though, you have to pay attention to just how ugly the observation (fact) is. &nbsp;And even more to how ugly a collection of observations is. &nbsp;Science fair project I judged a couple of years ago, the student mentioned his methods for keeping the experiment, which had to be untouched while going, out of reach of his young brother. &nbsp;This student has a firm grasp of the ugliness of data and trying to collect it. &nbsp;I gave him high marks.<br /><br />I also mentioned a story or two I knew of data collection challenges. &nbsp;I'll share them and some others here, and invite you to add your own.<br /><br />One family of ocean data comes from buoys floating on top of the ocean. &nbsp;A lot of the ocean is far from land, therefore far from perches for birds. &nbsp;Sea gulls and other birds are often grateful for the lovely perches we're putting out for them. &nbsp;Unfortunately, it does not help the accuracy of your wind speed measurements to have a <a href="https://integraltide.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/hawk-on-instruments.jpg" target="_blank">bird</a> sitting on your <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=birds+on+anemometers&amp;espv=2&amp;biw=900&amp;bih=636&amp;tbm=isch&amp;tbo=u&amp;source=univ&amp;sa=X&amp;ved=0CDAQsARqFQoTCJnA6be178YCFQQ1PgodIbEIxA#imgrc=97YMGJEpvRzWmM%3A" target="_blank">gauge</a>. &nbsp;Birds sitting on the solar panel reduce your energy available/recharge rate, and thence maybe lead to data outages while waiting for recharging. Guano is great for fertilizer, but wrecks havoc on the accuracy of your temperature, pressure, and moisture readings.<br /><br /><a href="https://www.123rf.com/photo_15759906_walrus-sunbathing-on-a-buoy.html" target="_blank">Walrus</a> don't mind taking a rest every now and then either. &nbsp;They're not normally a threat to wind speed measurement (which is at the top of the buoy). &nbsp;But we also want to get wave measurements -- how high are they, how fast are they, what direction are they going. &nbsp;Having a <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=birds+on+anemometers&amp;espv=2&amp;biw=900&amp;bih=636&amp;tbm=isch&amp;tbo=u&amp;source=univ&amp;sa=X&amp;ved=0CDAQsARqFQoTCJnA6be178YCFQQ1PgodIbEIxA#tbm=isch&amp;q=walrus+on+buoy&amp;imgrc=xMke6qlKRww1ZM%3A" target="_blank">walrus or two on your buoy</a> slows its ability to respond, and may suppress the peaks of the measured waves.<br /><br />On land, your instrument enclosures (the Stevenson Screen for instance) provide a nice place for bees, wasps, small birds to nest. &nbsp;Squirrels like to play with them too. &nbsp;A beehive next to your thermometer does not help its accuracy.<br /><br />Back at sea, I once got a call about a problem buoy. &nbsp;It was reporting extremely high temperatures near noon because the paint had been stripped during a storm, and the now-bare metal was reflecting sunlight onto the marine thermometer.<br /><br />That should get you started for remembering your own horror stories about data collection. <br /><br />Recently saw someone on the web taking the line that if data wasn't perfect, you should throw out everything from that instrument or site. &nbsp;Well, no. &nbsp;If you did that, you'd never have any data to work with. &nbsp;For my examples, you mostly just ignore the data during the period you've got a walrus infestation. &nbsp;But there are other kinds of things which affect your observing, and which you might be able to compensate for. http://moregrumbinescience.blogspot.com/2015/07/data-horrors.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Robert Grumbine)5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5337555368793819627.post-5763000089123930757Mon, 08 Jun 2015 11:30:00 +00002015-06-08T07:30:03.094-04:00spectatingSpectating on Science: Length of the GameScience doesn't move as fast as basketball, so spectators need to adjust their expectations.&nbsp; The 'game' plays out over a period of years.&nbsp; The first play of the game is that someone publishes their work in the <a href="http://moregrumbinescience.blogspot.com/2008/07/peer-review.html">peer reviewed</a> professional literature.&nbsp; But that's something like the first pass in football/basketball/hockey -- it might _eventually_ turn in to a score.&nbsp; But it isn't the score itself.<br /><br />The short-hand for this is 'single study syndrome'.&nbsp; All sorts of things show up in the media, or scientific literature, as being interesting and perhaps revolutionary.&nbsp; But almost no revolutions follow from the very first study.&nbsp; Few of the potentially interesting ideas, from the first publication, really hold up for any length of time.&nbsp; Something worked out to be interesting _once_.&nbsp; But, chances are good it won't hold up in the long run -- the previous consensus or state of knowledge is more likely correct than the new idea with just a single supporting piece of research.<br /><br />For the spectator of science, which also includes me most of the time, we can, and have to, sit back a little and wait for the confirming evidence or studies.&nbsp; One area which is an active area of discussion in science now is whether the recent US weather extremes (Eastern US has been far to the cold end of the historical distribution in winters of 2014 and 2015, but the Western US has been far to the hot end -- including setting several all time records) is due to the reduced Arctic sea ice pack.<br /><a name='more'></a>Jennifer Francis, and a number of others, suggest the answer is yes -- Arctic sea ice cover is a cause of the observed weather.&nbsp; John Walsh, and a number of others, suggest the answer is that weather happens, as it always has, which mean you sometimes get warm/cold winters like this.&nbsp; I know both Jennifer and John personally, and many of their collaborators.&nbsp; They're all good scientists.&nbsp; They all have good arguments on their side.&nbsp; My personal take so far is that Jennifer is more likely more correct than John.&nbsp; But I am a spectator on this issue, not one of the primary investigators, so it's going to be a while, a few more years probably, before I'll see it as really decided.<br /><br />But _this_ is what it's like in the world of real scientific 'debate'.&nbsp; It isn't a matter of scoring a quick sound-bite debating 'point'.&nbsp; It is slogging through the available data and trying to do the best possible analysis of it, and constructing the best possible conclusions from it.&nbsp; I lean towards thinking John has neglected some data sources in his analysis, but Jennifer has also underestimated some other data sources.&nbsp; No knock on them; there are too many possible sources for one person to analyze them all seriously, judgement is required.&nbsp; Who will make the best analysis?&nbsp; I don't know, and, in a sense, don't care.&nbsp; The science will advance based on _whoever_ it is makes the best analysis from the most data.<br /><br />It's an interesting time to be a spectator on the topic of how polar conditions may affect the mid-latitudes. Get some popcorn and keep your eye on the scientific journals.http://moregrumbinescience.blogspot.com/2015/06/spectating-on-science-length-of-game.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Robert Grumbine)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5337555368793819627.post-2051082151856355958Tue, 02 Jun 2015 11:30:00 +00002015-06-02T07:30:02.403-04:00modellingphilosophyHow to build a climate model?How is it that we go about building climate models?&nbsp; One thing is, that we would like to build our model to represent everything that we know happens.&nbsp; If we could actually do so -- mainly meaning if the computers were fast enough -- life would be simple.&nbsp; As usual, life is not simple.<br /><br />I'll take one feature as a poster child.&nbsp; We know the laws of motion pretty well.&nbsp; I could write them down pretty easily and with only a moderate amount more effort write a computer program to solve them.&nbsp; These are the Navier-Stokes equations.&nbsp; On one hand, they're surprisingly complex (from them comes dynamical chaos), but on the other, they're no problem -- we know how to write the computer programs to do conservation of momentum.&nbsp; Ok entire books have been written on even a single portion of the problem.&nbsp; Still, the books <i>have</i> already been written.<br /><br />The problem is, if you want to run your climate model using what we <i>know</i> is a representation sufficient to capture everything we need to do, in order to represent everything we <i>know</i> is going on, you need to have your grid points only 1 millimeter apart.&nbsp; That's ok, but it means something like 10^30 times as much computing power as the world's most powerful computer today. (A million trillion trillion times as much computing power.)<br /><br />What do we do in the mean time?<br /><a name='more'></a>What we do in the mean time is realize that there are simpler ways to represent <i>almost</i> exactly, or at least fairly well in an average sense, what is going on -- even though we don't have computers emormously more powerful than currently exist.&nbsp; This is where we encounter 'parameterizations'.<br /><br />A parameterization is where we try to represent all those tiny features that we don't (currently) have the computing power to represent directly.&nbsp; In an ideal world (which includes infinite computer speed), we wouldn't need any parameterizations.<br /><br />Since we live in the real, and imperfect, world, we deal with the fact that we don't have infinitely fast computers.&nbsp; But we do have amazingly fast computers which are able to deal with problems that we never used to be able to consider.&nbsp; Still, not infinitely fast, or even as fast as we already know enough science make use of.<br /><br />Now, one of the things which leads to dynamical chaos is that momentum advects (fast winds here shove themselves over there) as well as dissipates (tiny blobs, the 1 mm I mentioned, whirl about fast enough that the energy gets turned in to heat, and the air comes to a stop).&nbsp; We <i>know</i> this.&nbsp; And give us a computer that can cover everything down to the 'dissipation scale' (the 1 mm or so), we can do a fair job of running a model that predicts what you see.&nbsp; (Some interesting exceptions exist, but that's for a different note.)&nbsp; The problem, for climate modeling, is that the volume we can manage this way is the size of a fish tank.&nbsp; And not necessarily that large a fish tank (about 1000 L, 250 gallons).<br /><br />On the other hand, we do have simplified representations of what happens at that smaller scale.&nbsp; And they do a moderately good job (bulk aerodynamics) to pretty good job (Monin-Obukhov similarity theory).&nbsp; And, of course, there are more elaborate methods, with correspondingly better behavior. So, again, what do we do in the mean time?<br /><br />One thing is, we take our parameterization and see how closely it lets us match what we observe about the world.&nbsp; For turbulence parameterizations (which is what I've taken at the moment) this means observing how the wind changes with distance above the surface, and how it changes as you move across a new surface.&nbsp; That means, for instance, taking a field with known characteristics (freshly plowed, let's say) and putting wind measuring devices (anemometers) on towers along the prevailing wind direction.&nbsp; Then look at how the wind speed changes as you move down the wind path, and as you move up from the surface.&nbsp; If your parameterization has some tunable numbers, you tune them to get the best representation of these observed winds.<br /><br />What we don't do is tune (change) those numbers until we get some particular climate change sensitivity.&nbsp; On the one hand, it's probably impossible computationally (the globe is tremendously larger than the field you plowed).&nbsp; On the other hand, it is also dishonest and undesirable.&nbsp; Undesirable because it means that your turbulence parameterization wouldn't be representing turbulence nearly as well as it could.&nbsp; (I'll take it as given that the dishonest aspects are obvious.)<br /><br />This makes for one aspect of building a climate model -- you can't represent everything that you know exists, so you simplify some of it.&nbsp; But you do your best to represent that aspect (turbulence for now) as well as you can -- in its own terms.&nbsp; Turbulence parameterizations try to represent how heat, moisture, momentum, get transported near the earth's surface (among other places), so you check them by how well they do that job.http://moregrumbinescience.blogspot.com/2015/06/how-to-build-climate-model.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Robert Grumbine)8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5337555368793819627.post-7314153654150759293Mon, 01 Jun 2015 11:00:00 +00002015-06-01T07:00:08.258-04:00modellingphilosophyWhat is a model?In the blogospheric talk about climate change 'model' gets mentioned a lot.&nbsp; Sometimes it's merely descriptive, and often it is perjorative.&nbsp; But it is mostly never really defined.&nbsp; Like or loath them, nobody says just what models are.&nbsp; Except for me, here and now.&nbsp; (And probably a number of other people at other times and places -- but still, few and far between. :-)<br /><br />'Obviously' a model is a particularly attractive human.&nbsp; Right?&nbsp; I've actually received email at my workplace (a 'modelling branch') from people who were trying to advance the careers of their models, in this sense of model.&nbsp; We don't deal with that kind of model.<br /><br />'Obviously' a model is to take the original (the Apollo Saturn V rocket that took people to the moon, for example) and duplicate everything about it, but at 1/32 the original size&nbsp; Right?&nbsp; Perhaps.&nbsp; I know people tho like this sort of thing.&nbsp; But again that's not what we mean either if we are discussing climate (or atmosphere, ocean, sea ice, land, glacier, ...) models.<br /><br />For my purposes, a model is an idealized, and/or simplified, representation of the real world.&nbsp; When we are interested in something as big and complex as climate, or even just the Arctic sea ice pack, we really can't cope with the whole thing in all of its glorious complexity.&nbsp; We have to simplify the reality somehow.&nbsp; That simplification is the model.<br /><br />In this sense of 'model', models are everywhere.&nbsp; We use a model for human behavior when we decide what somebody else means when they raise their hand in a certain way.&nbsp; (is it open hand, or a fist?&nbsp; did they just say 'hello', or 'I'm going to kill you'.&nbsp; and so on)&nbsp; Weather has also been modelled by using 'dishpans' -- <a href="http://web.atmos.ucla.edu/tcd//PREPRINTS/Ghil&amp;co-R_Hide_exp%27ts-A&amp;G%2710.pdf" target="_blank">Raymond Hide</a> and <a href="http://www-news.uchicago.edu/releases/02/020731.fultz.shtml" target="_blank">David Fultz</a> being two of the best examples of people taking this approach*.<br /><a name='more'></a><br />In working with satellite observations, there are different models involved, about the structure of the atmosphere and surface of the earth, how they vary in space and time, and what exactly your satellite observed.&nbsp; In pondering how climate will change if we do certain things (what things exactly?&nbsp; oops, another model) to the earth's atmosphere and surface, we use different sorts of models.<br /><br />I'll take up a bit of this line tomorrow.<br /><br />* The (scientific) world is a very small place -- David Fultz was my professor for general meteorology, general oceanography, and synoptic meteorology.&nbsp; Ray Hide was advisor to two of my coworkers, and I've corresponded with him about an idea of mine that I'll be discussing in a bit on this blog.&nbsp; While the world at large might be within 6 degrees of separation, I'm thinking that science is more like 2.http://moregrumbinescience.blogspot.com/2015/06/what-is-model.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Robert Grumbine)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5337555368793819627.post-3874039480251485930Fri, 22 May 2015 12:00:00 +00002015-05-22T08:00:03.891-04:00doing sciencephilosophyBad philosophy 1Different people are good at different things, which is no real surprise; but one of the common situations where some people suddenly become blind to this is scientists regarding philosophy.&nbsp; Plus, well, most non-philosophers regarding philosophy.&nbsp; I've had the good fortune to know a couple of serious philosophers of science, enough to appreciate that they've developed some understandings more profoundly than I have.&nbsp; And, I'm immodest enough to extend that to 'more profoundly than most non-philosophers'.<br /><br />One path of bad philosophy, the one which causes this post, follows from mistakes on the matter of certainty.&nbsp; Or, naming it by way of the error it leads to, intellectual nihilism.&nbsp; Certainty is a problematic concept for science, and science versus philosophy.&nbsp; Errors come from both sides, so beware of throwing rocks.&nbsp; From my philosophical vantage point, science is <i>intrinsically</i> uncertain.&nbsp; My scientific excuse for that philosophical assumption is to consider the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle" target="_blank">Uncertainty Principle</a>.&nbsp; It's enough for here to understand that you cannot, simultaneously, observe everything about a complex system (like an electron, an atom, or the climate system) exactly.&nbsp; You can do pretty well, but there's <i>always</i> some uncertainty in the observations.<br /><br />A different line of philosophy regards how and how well you can consider yourself to know something (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistemology" target="_blank">epistomology</a>).&nbsp; One view of this derives from Karl Popper, under the label 'falsification'.&nbsp; For here, it's enough to note that one can really only be confident about your knowledge to the extent to which you've tested it.&nbsp; (Do, of course read further!)&nbsp; Since you can only be confident about your knowledge to the degree to which you've tested the idea/hypothesis/theory/..., and any test of an idea (etc.) is intrinsically uncertain (uncertainty principle again), you can never be <i>entirely</i> certain that you have the right answer, idea, hypothesis, theory.&nbsp; So some humility is in order -- for everybody.<br /><br />Enter the bad philosophy.<br /><a name='more'></a>On one hand, you can never be <i>certain</i> about what you think is true about the real world.&nbsp; On the other hand, neither can anybody <i>else</i>.&nbsp; The bad philosophy being to take the line that since the other person cannot be <i>certain</i>, the answer you like is just as reasonable.&nbsp; Or needs to be considered, at least.&nbsp; Where we can break the error in practice is to distinguish between more confident and less confident knowledge.&nbsp; As I took up before (ok, stole, er, borrowed, in <a href="http://moregrumbinescience.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-relativity-of-wrong.html" target="_blank">The Relativity of Wrong)</a>, even without certain or perfect knowledge, we can indeed tell the difference between more and less likely to be correct.<br /><br />The intellectual nihilism, and bad philosophy, is to ignore this, and pursue the notion that as long as the other person's position isn't <i>proven</i> to be correct, yours is correct.&nbsp; Or just that as long as the other person can't <i>prove</i> their position to be correct, they are wrong.&nbsp; Or, ... any number of variations.&nbsp; Intellectual nihilism -- thence the death of knowledge -- is when you declare that anything that's not certain to not really be knowledge.&nbsp; (This comes under many hiding places.&nbsp; But this is where the process winds up.)&nbsp; Since nothing that's about the real world can be <i>certain</i>, you have to conclude that you know nothing about the real world.<br /><br />If you know nothing about the real world, you should just not get out of your bed in the morning.&nbsp; You can't be <i>certain</i> that the floor is still there, nor that there's air away from your bed, and so forth.&nbsp; Thus the problem of the intellectual nihilist.&nbsp; <br /><br />If you choose to get out of the bed in the morning, you have rejected this nihilism.&nbsp; Knowledge about the world isn't <i>certain</i>, but it can be good enough to get out of the bed.&nbsp; Or decide not to jump out the window, or even to conclude that humans really do have something significant to do with the climate system (even if you're not <i>certain</i> about <i>exactly</i> how much).&nbsp; We aren't <i>certain</i> about the <i>exact</i> contribution of humans to observed climate change, but we can be quite confident that it's positive (towards more warming) and greater than zero.<br /><br />A practical illustration of the bad philosophy, and the prompting for this post, is over at <a href="http://judithcurry.com/2015/05/21/the-method-of-multiple-working-hypotheses/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Climate Etc.</a>, where Curry illustrates a severe failure to realize that her philosophy destroys her ability to claim anything about the world, either that she's correct or that anybody else is wrong.&nbsp; As always, check it out yourself.&nbsp; If you think she avoided the nihilism, certainly do comment about how she did.&nbsp; In the mean time, I'll also observe that she fails to apply the method of multiple working hypotheses to her own hypotheses.&nbsp; As I observed last fall, one adjunct to the <a href="http://moregrumbinescience.blogspot.com/2014/09/multiple-working-hypotheses.html" target="_blank">method of multiple working hypotheses</a> is that you have to kill off the less viable hypotheses in favor of the, currently, more viable.&nbsp; That you can't <i>prove</i> that hypothesis #72 is false does not mean that you have to spend the work to keep it on the table.&nbsp; It's both bad philosophy and bad science.&nbsp; We can create an infinite number of hypotheses (if, somehow, you can't, I certainly can, and one of us is more than enough).&nbsp; If we didn't mow down (if only temporarily) vast numbers of hypotheses, we'd never be able to make any progress.&nbsp; T. H. Huxley has a good line in related vein -- <a href="http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Thomas_Henry_Huxley"> Life is too short to occupy oneself with the slaying of the slain more than once.</a>&nbsp;<br /><br />Thus it goes for doing science.&nbsp; Once one of those infinity of hypotheses is slain, such as the hypothesis that CO2 has nothing to do with climate change, it stays dead.&nbsp; Until and unless someone presents some serious evidence that the former examination of the hypothesis was incorrect, or comes up with new evidence, etc., we proceed with the hypothesis (theory?) that CO2 is indeed involved (level to be examined) in climate change.&nbsp; Hypotheses then advance to <a href="http://moregrumbinescience.blogspot.com/2008/08/discussion-vs-debate.html" target="_blank">discussing</a> just how much of a factor it is.<br /><br />So say I, but welcome your discussion.&nbsp; Being <a href="http://moregrumbinescience.blogspot.com/2008/08/discussion-vs-debate.html" target="_blank">discussion</a>, if you present substance, I could change my mind.&nbsp; http://moregrumbinescience.blogspot.com/2015/05/bad-philosophy-1.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Robert Grumbine)6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5337555368793819627.post-4153980742355345840Mon, 18 May 2015 11:30:00 +00002015-05-18T07:30:01.383-04:00mathematicsPlaying With Numbers: Triangles and SquaresYou can play with numbers; which will be a surprise to some and extremely obvious to others.&nbsp; I'm writing for those who will be surprised.&nbsp; Consider the picture of dots here:<verbatim></verbatim><br />* *<br />&nbsp;*<br /><br />We've got a triangle, a small one.&nbsp; It has 3 dots.&nbsp; Now put another row of dots, keeping it a triangle:<verbatim></verbatim><br />* * *<br />&nbsp;* *<br />&nbsp; *<br /><br />There are 3 dots in the first triangle, 6 in the second.&nbsp; Next triangle will have 10 (as we add in a row of 4).&nbsp;<br /><br />For gaming: What is the 20th triangle number?&nbsp; Is there a way you can look at a number and tell whether it is triangular?<br /><br />Or you can play with squares:<br />*<br /><verbatim></verbatim><br />* *<br />* *<br /><br /><verbatim></verbatim><br />* * *<br />* * *<br />* * *<br /><br />So the first three square numbers are 1, 4, 9.&nbsp; Next, the 4th square number, will be 16.&nbsp; These are actually simpler to game than the triangular numbers.&nbsp; What's the 20th square number? <br /><br />And of course we can make more interesting figures, like hexagons:<verbatim></verbatim><br />&nbsp;* *<br />* * *<br />&nbsp;* *<br /><br />So the first hexagonal number is 7.&nbsp; What's the second?&nbsp; Can you predict the 3rd, the 20th?<br /><br />On the one hand, we're just playing some games here.&nbsp; On the other, there are also serious mathematical papers on <a href="http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&amp;q=%22hexagonal+numbers%22&amp;btnG=&amp;as_sdt=1%2C21&amp;as_sdtp=">hexagonal numbers</a>, and triangular, octagonal, and so forth.http://moregrumbinescience.blogspot.com/2015/05/playing-with-numbers-triangles-and.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Robert Grumbine)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5337555368793819627.post-5812754184062244214Wed, 08 Apr 2015 11:30:00 +00002015-04-08T07:30:01.353-04:00newsAutism Awareness month 2015A reminder that April is Autism Awareness month.&nbsp; I can't say very much first hand, but won't let that stop me from writing.&nbsp; (As usual.)<br /><br />Couple notes.&nbsp; One is, though I'm not autistic, I'm also not dead center 'normal' (whatever that is).&nbsp; (what, you've noticed?).&nbsp; I deviate from 'normal' in some directions that point in the direction of autism.&nbsp; Not enough to be on the autism spectrum myself, but enough that my sister found me useful as a guidepost towards her autistic students.&nbsp; Partly because of this, I am irritated by people who say 'everybody in science is autistic'.&nbsp;&nbsp;<br /><br />Another note is, I know a number of autistic people, at various places along the spectrum.&nbsp; That's the other reason I'm irritated by such blanket generalizations.&nbsp; I wouldn't be surprised to find that some working scientists/engineers/... are indeed autistic.&nbsp; But it's neither necessary nor sufficient, nor does it really honestly connect to either the scientists (who may or may not be autistic) or autistic people (who may or may not be scientists).<br /><br />The thing to do is, er, be aware of autism.&nbsp; See also my sister's (same one) <a href="https://philosophicallypurple.wordpress.com/2015/04/04/autism-awareness-a-month-of-ruminations/" target="_blank">blog.</a>&nbsp; Autistic people are people.&nbsp; Start, and finish.&nbsp; As with any people, you get farther with understanding them as themselves rather than trying to fit them in to preconceptions you may have.http://moregrumbinescience.blogspot.com/2015/04/autism-awareness-month-2015.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Robert Grumbine)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5337555368793819627.post-8215190475284336592Fri, 03 Apr 2015 11:30:00 +00002015-04-03T07:30:01.162-04:00being a scientistproject folderCitizen Science Versus ScienceIt's impolitic to say so, but I dislike the term 'Citizen Science'.&nbsp; Scientists are supposed to be embracing 'Citizen Science' and all that.&nbsp; But I can't get rid of the feeling that it's a patronizing term.&nbsp; Nor can I ignore the echo that scientists are something other than citizens.&nbsp; Lose-lose.<br /><br />The patronizing, maybe you don't see it.&nbsp; But consider some other realms of activity.&nbsp; I am, for instance, a runner.&nbsp; Not a 'citizen runner', just a runner.&nbsp; I have been in races with some people who were anywhere from slow beginners to world record holders.&nbsp; In one race, I ran a 10 km against the (then) current men's marathon world record holder (Khalid Khannouchi) and the soon-to-be women's marathon world record holder (Catherine Ndereba).&nbsp; No, I'm not great.&nbsp; That's the point.&nbsp; They ran their 10k, in about 28 and 30 minutes, respectively.&nbsp; And I ran mine in about 45 minutes.&nbsp; They were much better than I.&nbsp; But we all (about 3000 of us) ran the same race, by the same rules, and were called the same thing -- runners.<br /><br />Or consider music.&nbsp; At one point, I played clarinet.&nbsp; With tons of practice, I was able to get reasonably good results and sat near the top of my section in high school.&nbsp; We were pretty good for a high school band, so maybe I was pretty good clarinetist back then.&nbsp; The thing is, I know what seriously good musicians were like -- my sisters were both talented, one exceedingly so.&nbsp; They were oboist and flautist.&nbsp; The flautist might have been able to turn professional successfully.&nbsp; Chose not to.&nbsp; But you notice, again, same terms -- clarinetist, oboist, flautist -- used for us nonprofessionals as for the professionals.&nbsp;<br /><br />My take is, let's all go do science.&nbsp; Not citizen science, just science, period.&nbsp; Same as music or sports or anything else, some of us make a living at it, and many more will do it for the love of it.&nbsp; But we're all engaging in the same activity, so let's also call it by the same name.&nbsp; Same as we do for any other activity.http://moregrumbinescience.blogspot.com/2015/04/citizen-science-versus-science.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Robert Grumbine)11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5337555368793819627.post-869330412582955905Wed, 25 Mar 2015 15:07:00 +00002015-03-25T11:07:36.265-04:00climate changeweeding sourcesHow to pick cherriesThe not-so fine art of contriving to support the conclusion you predetermined is <a href="http://moregrumbinescience.blogspot.com/2008/08/cherry-picking.html" target="_blank">cherry picking</a>.&nbsp; Really not a good thing for a scientist to do or condone, but pretty common in politics.&nbsp; The latest example comes from politician (now presidential candidate) Ted Cruz, being condoned/defended (even praised) by scientist <a href="http://judithcurry.com/2015/03/24/the-stupid-party/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Judy Curry</a>. <br /><br />Suppose you're interested in global warming, just in understanding what's going on -- not in 'proving' that there is warming, or cooling, or that temperatures are unchanged.&nbsp; You're an actual skeptic -- looking for evidence and where the evidence leads.&nbsp; One thing you learn pretty quickly in your skeptical explorations is that you need <a href="http://moregrumbinescience.blogspot.com/2009/01/results-on-deciding-trends.html">20-30 years of data to define a global climate temperature</a>.&nbsp; Shorter than that, and your answer depends sensitively on your averaging period.&nbsp; As a skeptic, you don't want such unreliable methods.&nbsp; Apply the 30 years to a number of data records (below), and you get the answer that climate has been warming, 1.3-1.7 K/century (2.3-3.1 F).<br /><br />As a cherry-picker, committed to finding a particular answer, however, you go straight for the option of using short spans -- look for a record length that will give you the answer you want, then ignore the fact that your answer changes if a couple years are added or subtracted.<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-P_vXLEgRF4E/VRLF5u3CUGI/AAAAAAAAASM/m1UyN7EiuhQ/s1600/cherry.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-P_vXLEgRF4E/VRLF5u3CUGI/AAAAAAAAASM/m1UyN7EiuhQ/s1600/cherry.png" height="240" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><a name='more'></a>Since there are different ways of looking at 'surface' temperature, you also cherry pick which data source to use.&nbsp; For instance there are satellite observations (actually seeing the lowest 10 km of the atmosphere, peak sensitivity about 2.5 km above sea level).&nbsp; And we've got thermometers 2 meters above the surface (much closer to where I live).&nbsp; For both sorts of data, there is more than one group analyzing the data.&nbsp; Cherry picker's delight.<br /><br />I've pulled down satellite data from <a href="http://www.remss.com/measurements/upper-air-temperature">RSS</a> and <a href="http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/t2lt/uahncdc_lt_5.6.txt" target="_blank">UAH</a> for TLT 'global', and from <a href="http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cag/time-series/global/globe/land_ocean/ytd/12/1880-2014.csv">NCDC</a> and <a href="http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/HadCRUT4-gl.dat">HadCRUT4</a> for thermometer records.&nbsp; Then, compute trends to the present (for NCDC, I repeated 2014 in to 2015, so that all sets are showing trends to 2015/present).&nbsp; That's what you see in the figure above.&nbsp; 30 years ago is 1985, which is where I read off the trend numbers I gave above.&nbsp; The plotted trend is degrees per year, so I multiplied by 100 (giving degrees per century) to get the numbers above.<br /><br />If you're a skeptic, you look at those four curves and wonder why RSS (purple) gives such different answers than the other three in the most recent 20 years.&nbsp; It might be correct and the other three wrong, but you have to wonder, and be very uneasy about basing a conclusion solely on it.<br /><br />But if you're a cherry-picker, you notice that some of the time, RSS shows a near zero trend, or even negative.&nbsp; You go straight to that one source, and ignore all others.&nbsp; Then pick the oldest time when you can get your desired result -- 17 years ago (as I write).&nbsp; You ignore that if you chose 15 or 19 years instead you'd have a positive trend.&nbsp; And you ignore that for climate, for reasons which I illustrated six years ago (and which are much older than that, and based on principles used in many fields), you want 20-30 years.&nbsp; If you pick just the right time span, from just the right data set, you can have the cherry you want.<br /><br />If you're a skeptic, however, you follow up on the RSS data set and see what might be going on.&nbsp; If you're a hard core data type, you get the MSU and AMSU original data and reprocess itself.&nbsp; Most people, though, are better served by checking out the original source.&nbsp; See what <a href="http://www.remss.com/blog/recent-slowing-rise-global-temperatures">Carl Mears of RSS</a>, the person leading that product's construction has to say about his product.&nbsp;<br /><br />Do read the article.&nbsp; A couple of representative quotes (but, of course, don't take my word for it):<br /><br /><i>Does this slow-down in the warming mean that the idea of anthropogenic global warming is no longer valid? &nbsp;The short answer is ‘no’. &nbsp;The denialists like to assume that the cause for the model/observation discrepancy is some kind of problem with the fundamental model physics, and they pooh-pooh any other sort of explanation. &nbsp;This leads them to conclude, very likely erroneously, that the long-term sensitivity of the climate is much less than is currently thought.</i><br /><i></i><i>The truth is that there are lots of causes besides errors in the fundamental model physics that could lead to the model/observation discrepancy. &nbsp;I summarize a number of these possible causes below. &nbsp;Without convincing evidence of model physics flaws (and I haven’t seen any), I would say that the possible causes described below need to be investigated and ruled out before we can pin the blame on fundamental modelling errors.</i><br /><br /><br />and:<br /><br /><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">Measurement Errors:</span></i><br /> <i>As a data scientist, I am among the first to acknowledge that all climate datasets likely contain some errors. &nbsp;However, I have a hard time believing that both the satellite and the surface temperature datasets have errors large enough to account for the model/observation differences. &nbsp;For example, the global trend uncertainty (2-sigma) for the global TLT trend is around 0.03 K/decade (Mears et al. 2011). &nbsp;Even if 0.03 K/decade were added to the best-estimate trend value of 0.123 K/decade, it would still be at the extreme low end of the model trends. &nbsp;A similar, but stronger case can be made using surface temperature datasets, which I consider to be more reliable than satellite datasets (they certainly agree with each other better than the various satellite datasets do!). &nbsp;So I don’t think the problem can be explained fully by measurement errors.</i><br /><br />Hmm.&nbsp; Even a cursory check in with the producer of the data shows no signs that he believes it disproves warming, or shows no warming.&nbsp; Some issues worth researching on why the difference between models and his data is all (for now).<br /><br />But cherry-pickers don't need to read the data sources.&nbsp; It's skeptics who want and need to understand what they're looking at.http://moregrumbinescience.blogspot.com/2015/03/how-to-pick-cherries.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Robert Grumbine)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5337555368793819627.post-3769849754717631504Thu, 05 Mar 2015 12:30:00 +00002015-03-05T07:30:01.018-05:00historypoliticsrecommendationsMerchants of Doubt MovieDo go see the Merchants of Doubt Movie.&nbsp; Los Angeles and New York March 6 opening, Chicago, San Francisco, and Washington DC the 13th.&nbsp; More widely starting the <a href="http://www.sonyclassics.com/merchantsofdoubt/dates.html" target="_blank">20th of March</a>.&nbsp; The movie is inspired by the book of the same name, about how it is established industries can sell Doubt even in areas where the science is pretty well established.<br /><br />The movie is not the book, nor does it make the mistake of trying to put the book on screen.&nbsp; But it does pick up many of the threads, and, most importantly, shows well how the Merchants of Doubt ply their trade.&nbsp; And it does so in an engaging way.&nbsp; One element of that being the extended visual, and practical, illustration of close up magic.&nbsp; Sleight of hand, misdirection, using shills (3 card monte was the example for this) all have their analogues for the Merchants of Doubt.<br /><br />The phrase itself derives from the tobacco industry, PR firm, which concluded that doubt was their product -- they could not argue the science, but they could still cast doubt.&nbsp; Decades later (not from the movie) this was echoed by <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2003/mar/04/usnews.climatechange">Frank Luntz</a>, who also observed <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2003/mar/04/usnews.climatechange">"A compelling story, even if factually inaccurate, can be more emotionally compelling than a dry recitation of the truth," Mr Luntz notes in the memo.</a><br /><br />We see this item primarily through the flame retardants theme in the move.&nbsp; A doctor testifies to legislators about the harrowing death of a child, burned on the parts of its body that were on the non-flame-retardant pillow as opposed to the flame-retarded mattress.&nbsp; Once the testimony is given, the bill to lift requirements for the chemicals is promptly defeated.&nbsp; Except, it turns out, and the doctor confirms, that the events in his testimony never actually happened.&nbsp; But his story was far more compelling that mere recitation of facts about the (in)effectiveness of the fire-retardants.&nbsp; And that's the important part.&nbsp; (? For the doctor, at least, and his funders.&nbsp; See who that turns out to be.)<br /><br />How did we get to fire retardants from tobacco?&nbsp; Cancer is a long stretch from fire, after all.&nbsp; But that's part of the tangled web of merchandising Doubt.&nbsp; Burning cigarettes start fires.&nbsp; Tobacco companies could have been told to develop cigarettes that didn't burn so long unattended.&nbsp; Rather than do so (potentially expensive), they pushed the argument, successfully, that the problem was the couches/mattresses/pillows.&nbsp; They shouldn't catch fire so easily; that was the real problem.&nbsp; If you can convince people that it's the fault of couches for letting themselves be burned, rather than of the cigarettes for burning couches (thence homes and people), there are few limits to what you can convince people of.<br /><br />That's one of the methods of the PR flacks, and those methods are what the movie explores in a number of difference stories and ways.&nbsp; Climate looms large in the movie, larger than in the book.&nbsp; That renders it a little hard for me to say much about -- I have too much first hand experience with the people and events.&nbsp; What I can say from that first hand knowledge (or at worst second hand) is that it represents well how the people in the climate 'debate' actually talk.&nbsp; And I can say with some confidence that it represents them fairly.&nbsp; That's true whether it's Marc Morano (who's quite up front about the fact that he is attacking the scientists, not the science, and is pleased about the hate-mail that scientists get after he releases their email addresses) or <a href="http://moregrumbinescience.blogspot.com/2013/09/conservative-and-religious-responses-to.html" target="_blank">Katharine Hayhoe</a> (receiving end of some of that hate-mail, a scientist working on understanding climate who has been talking publicly to groups about creation care).&nbsp; Katharine is also a conservative evangelical Christian.&nbsp; One of the themes in the moving being about tribalism, so such identifiers sometimes are important.<br /><br />I don't give away much, the meat is how you get to this point, in observing that I also like Producer/Director Robert Kenner's choice to end the movie with some optimism from Bob Inglis (6 time congressman elected from very conservative part of very conservative South Carolina) as to his belief that the problems of climate change are real (which got him massacred in his last primary) and can be addressed.&nbsp; The Merchants of Doubt have their successes, as does the magician.&nbsp; But, as more people see how the trick is done, the fewer who fall for it.&nbsp; I hope.&nbsp; See the movie and let me know in the comments what you think.<br /><br />Since I was at a special preview, I'll write a separate note about that, and about some of the discussion we had with Kenner after the movie.<br /><br />In the mean time, some potentially useful other links:<br /><a href="http://sonyclassics.com/merchantsofdoubt/">Movie's official web site</a> with release dates<br /><a href="http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/merchants_of_doubt/">Rotten Tomatoes</a><br /><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3675568/">IMDb</a><br /><br /><br />http://moregrumbinescience.blogspot.com/2015/03/merchants-of-doubt-movie.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Robert Grumbine)3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5337555368793819627.post-5833712485975523416Mon, 02 Mar 2015 12:30:00 +00002015-03-02T07:30:00.733-05:00young scientistsBetter thoughtsDuring my weird week, I also had a couple signs of beauty.&nbsp; Both from my nieces, and one in the midst of sadness.&nbsp; If I haven't reminded you before: I've got great nieces!<br /><br />First, from my niece Kristen, whom you've heard from <a href="http://moregrumbinescience.blogspot.com/2010/11/knight-anoles-and-science-writing.html">before</a>, an observation about science/scientists: <br /><blockquote>Somehow I was chosen as one of two students who got to share dinner at an excellent Cuban place (which the school paid for) with most of the chemistry professors and the person who gave a presentation to us tonight about his job as an environmental consultant. So much knowledge was tossed around at the dinner table oh my gosh I feel so lucky to be surrounded by such an interesting group of people. I also feel really proud to be going to a school where the professors and students can eat and be nerds together like one happy dork family :'D</blockquote>Second, following the death of Leonard Nimoy (best known as Spock, from Star Trek), my other niece Madeline: <br /><blockquote><span data-reactid=".4f.1:3:1:$comment10203901846529659_10203901952292303:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1"><span data-reactid=".4f.1:3:1:$comment10203901846529659_10203901952292303:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1.0"></span><span data-ft="{&quot;tn&quot;:&quot;K&quot;}" data-reactid=".4f.1:3:1:$comment10203901846529659_10203901952292303:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1.$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".4f.1:3:1:$comment10203901846529659_10203901952292303:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1.$comment-body.0"><span data-reactid=".4f.1:3:1:$comment10203901846529659_10203901952292303:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1.$comment-body.0.$end:0:$0:0">Losing our beloved Mr. Spock left me with an empty part of my heart, being that my best friend and I call each other Kirk and Spock. In the words of that same friend we must not think of the fact he is gone, but to remember all of the good times we had with him.</span></span></span></span></blockquote><a name='more'></a><span data-ft="{&quot;tn&quot;:&quot;K&quot;}" data-reactid=".4f.1:3:1:$comment10203901846529659_10203901952292303:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1.$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".4f.1:3:1:$comment10203901846529659_10203901952292303:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1.$comment-body.0"><span data-reactid=".4f.1:3:1:$comment10203901846529659_10203901952292303:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1.$comment-body.0.$end:0:$0:0">Both are excellent thoughts.&nbsp; I can truly see Kristen's dinner table conversation, knowledge being tossed around.&nbsp; That's what any of my good dinners at scientific meetings are like.&nbsp; The knowledge sometimes looks like a hacky sack being kicked around.&nbsp; Except in these, we each take a bit out, and put a bit in and kick it on around the table. Her comment shows exactly why she was chosen to be at the table.&nbsp; (No, I'm not a biased uncle!&nbsp; Simple facts from an unbiased scientist :-)</span></span></span><br /><span data-reactid=".4f.1:3:1:$comment10203901846529659_10203901952292303:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1"><span data-ft="{&quot;tn&quot;:&quot;K&quot;}" data-reactid=".4f.1:3:1:$comment10203901846529659_10203901952292303:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1.$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".4f.1:3:1:$comment10203901846529659_10203901952292303:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1.$comment-body.0"><span data-reactid=".4f.1:3:1:$comment10203901846529659_10203901952292303:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1.$comment-body.0.$end:0:$0:0"><br /></span></span></span></span><span data-reactid=".4f.1:3:1:$comment10203901846529659_10203901952292303:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1"><span data-ft="{&quot;tn&quot;:&quot;K&quot;}" data-reactid=".4f.1:3:1:$comment10203901846529659_10203901952292303:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1.$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".4f.1:3:1:$comment10203901846529659_10203901952292303:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1.$comment-body.0"><span data-reactid=".4f.1:3:1:$comment10203901846529659_10203901952292303:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1.$comment-body.0.$end:0:$0:0">Mr. Spock is a little divided, but division was essential to his character.&nbsp; I've mentioned before about science's <a href="http://moregrumbinescience.blogspot.com/2013/06/sciences-spock-problem.html">Spock problem</a>.&nbsp; One side of the character was unemotional, which created a problem for science and scientists -- producing the notion that we (scientists) were supposed to be unemotional.&nbsp; That's something of a problem because we are not, nor is anybody truly human.&nbsp; But another side was what Madeline referred to -- the good, and indeed the passionate, person, 'fascinated' (to quote the character) with the universe and doing the most good that he could.&nbsp; </span></span></span></span><br /><span data-reactid=".4f.1:3:1:$comment10203901846529659_10203901952292303:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1"><span data-ft="{&quot;tn&quot;:&quot;K&quot;}" data-reactid=".4f.1:3:1:$comment10203901846529659_10203901952292303:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1.$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".4f.1:3:1:$comment10203901846529659_10203901952292303:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1.$comment-body.0"><span data-reactid=".4f.1:3:1:$comment10203901846529659_10203901952292303:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1.$comment-body.0.$end:0:$0:0"><br /></span></span></span></span><span data-reactid=".4f.1:3:1:$comment10203901846529659_10203901952292303:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1"><span data-ft="{&quot;tn&quot;:&quot;K&quot;}" data-reactid=".4f.1:3:1:$comment10203901846529659_10203901952292303:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1.$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".4f.1:3:1:$comment10203901846529659_10203901952292303:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1.$comment-body.0"><span data-reactid=".4f.1:3:1:$comment10203901846529659_10203901952292303:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1.$comment-body.0.$end:0:$0:0">Going over to the real person, Leonard Nimoy, it is also now circulating that he argued for equal pay (to George Koenig) for Nichelle Nichols.&nbsp; I hope in 2015 this doesn't sound remarkable.&nbsp; But in the late 1960s, it was, for two reasons.&nbsp; First, Nichelle Nichols is African American, and at that time, African Americans had only just gotten the right to vote.&nbsp; Equal pay was a grandiose thought.&nbsp; Second, she is a woman.&nbsp; The 1963 equal pay act had only recently been signed.&nbsp; But women were, and are, not given equal pay for equal work.&nbsp; There's a 1984 equal pay case, for instance, well after Nimoy supported equal pay on the show, Grumbine vs. USA.&nbsp; Grumbine won (which I take comfort from), but it was ludicrous that 20+ years after the law was signed, it still needed to be argued.&nbsp; Nimoy succeeded in his corner of the universe a good 15 years earlier.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span></span></span></span><br /><span data-reactid=".4f.1:3:1:$comment10203901846529659_10203901952292303:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1"><span data-ft="{&quot;tn&quot;:&quot;K&quot;}" data-reactid=".4f.1:3:1:$comment10203901846529659_10203901952292303:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1.$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".4f.1:3:1:$comment10203901846529659_10203901952292303:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1.$comment-body.0"><span data-reactid=".4f.1:3:1:$comment10203901846529659_10203901952292303:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1.$comment-body.0.$end:0:$0:0"><br /></span></span></span></span><span data-reactid=".4f.1:3:1:$comment10203901846529659_10203901952292303:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1"><span data-ft="{&quot;tn&quot;:&quot;K&quot;}" data-reactid=".4f.1:3:1:$comment10203901846529659_10203901952292303:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1.$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".4f.1:3:1:$comment10203901846529659_10203901952292303:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1.$comment-body.0"><span data-reactid=".4f.1:3:1:$comment10203901846529659_10203901952292303:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1.$comment-body.0.$end:0:$0:0">In the mean time, regardless of where they wind up professionally, these are definitely two #womeninstem (twitter hashtag).</span></span></span></span>http://moregrumbinescience.blogspot.com/2015/03/better-thoughts.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Robert Grumbine)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5337555368793819627.post-9079607725540505171Sun, 01 Mar 2015 20:57:00 +00002015-03-01T15:57:58.635-05:00A weird weekBetween people denying that <a href="http://moregrumbinescience.blogspot.com/2009/03/does-co2-correlate-with-temperature.html">there is a correlation between CO2 and temperature</a> and several other items, last week was just plain weird for me.&nbsp; A few pieces of, I hope, some more general interest.<br /><br />One is, of course, the reminder that CO2 is indeed correlated with temperature.&nbsp; And, of course, since that original article is pushing 6 years old, I should make an update.&nbsp; (Clue: The conclusions won't change much -- 6 years isn't large compared to the 50+ already used.)&nbsp; But also the reminder that I really should write that note I've had in mind about just what correlation is. <br /><br />Then there was the (different) anonymous also on twitter who seemed to think it was terrible that a comment was made equating people on 'the other side' were as bad or worse than the worst mass murderers.&nbsp; I don't hold with such comments, and the blog in question was for a group that I'm a member of (<a href="http://ncse.com/">National Center for Science Education</a>.&nbsp; But, by the time I saw the tweet from the anonymous the next morning the comment had been deleted.&nbsp; I agree with the deletion -- if we are talking science, there's no need or point to equating others to mass murderers.&nbsp; The anonymous was continuing to complain even after the comment was deleted, though.&nbsp; Don't get that, nor the fact that a different (and higher profile) blog published a main article equating people in climate science to terrorists and mass murders, yet it (the anonymous) has no objection to that.&nbsp; Nor, to be pragmatic, why it sent me the tweet rather than the owner of the blog.&nbsp; I may wield awesome power, but that's mostly in my own mind -- not in every organization that I happen to be a member of.<br /><br />In the midst of those, there was an idiot congressman (Grijalva, D-AZ) deciding to launch a fishing expedition on people, whose testimony he didn't like, got their funding from.&nbsp; I'm all in favor of disclosure of all funding by people who testify to congress.&nbsp; But not such selective application of the principle.As it stands, only government funding need be disclosed.&nbsp; That strikes me as a problem&nbsp; If you're happy with oil company funding not being disclosed, though, how happy are you that Greenpeace/Earth First!/... funding also doesn't need to be disclosed?&nbsp; And vice versa if you're not fine with business disclosure.&nbsp; For the same reasons, I also opposed the fishing expeditions of Joe Barton (R-TX) against Mann, Bradley, and Hughes (2005).&nbsp;<br /><br />I suppose there's a certain theatrical interest in what will follow now.&nbsp; Republicans have officially decried (James Inhofe, R-OK, chair, Senate Environment and Public Works Committee) such fishing expeditions.&nbsp; But Republican Lamar Smith (R-TX), chair of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee, is pursuing his own fishing expedition against the National Science Foundation for funding proposals on, for instance, internet security and fraud detection.&nbsp; Myself, I'm in favor of internet security and fraud detection.&nbsp;<br /><br />And then there's been the recent fishing expedition announced by Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) against NASA for its temperature record analysis.&nbsp; The analysis that agrees extremely well with results from NOAA, the Japanese Meteorological Agency, the Berkeley effort at re-analyzing all data from ground zero and re-inventing all wheels, ....&nbsp; <br /><br />Oh well.&nbsp; Then there were the llamas, and much to-do about someone's dress?&nbsp; A weird week.<br /><br />Next post will be about a couple more substantive, and constructive, aspects to the week.<br /><br /><br />http://moregrumbinescience.blogspot.com/2015/03/a-weird-week.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Robert Grumbine)2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5337555368793819627.post-1830619307512367375Thu, 26 Feb 2015 12:30:00 +00002015-02-26T07:30:01.557-05:00questionsQuestion place 2015Time to hang out the shingle again for questions.&nbsp; What would you like to know about?<br /><br />In the mean time -- See Dr. Kate Marvel's distressingly accurate description of the <a href="http://marvelclimate.blogspot.com/2015/02/reviews-and-regrets.html">peer review</a> process.&nbsp; Fortunately it isn't always like that.&nbsp; Unfortunately, it sometimes is, or at least is close.&nbsp; While you're at it, add her to your regular reading.&nbsp; See her also at @DrKateMarvel on twitter.<br /><br />Also, <a href="https://twitter.com/AstroKatie/status/568959722293833730">If you need your fellow scientists to be dry &amp; stern &amp; aloof in order to take their work seriously, you are a terrible scientist.</a> @AstroKatie&nbsp; Scientists are usually passionate about their science.&nbsp; How that gets expressed, varies.&nbsp; Some like the dry+stern+aloof approach.&nbsp; Some like the yippee! approach.&nbsp; As she also said, versus the dull and inaccurate 'scientists mystified by X' headlines: <a href="https://twitter.com/AstroKatie/status/568037684934897664">All headlines about unexplained phenomena should read "Scientists Super Excited to Find New Juicy Juicy Mystery to Gleefully Obsess Over"</a>http://moregrumbinescience.blogspot.com/2015/02/question-place-2015.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Robert Grumbine)2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5337555368793819627.post-5545734344525184412Thu, 19 Feb 2015 12:30:00 +00002015-02-19T07:30:01.802-05:00mathematicsweatherForecast EvaluationBoy, blow one historic blizzard forecast and people get all cranky*.&nbsp; Except, as <a href="http://www.examiner.com/article/an-almost-perfect-winter-storm-forecast" target="_blank">H. Michael Mogil</a>discusses, it was an almost perfect forecast.&nbsp; For the specifics of that storm and its forecast, I refer you to Mogil's article.<br /><br />I'm going to take up the more narrow topic of forecast evaluation.&nbsp; (Disclosure: I do work for NOAA/NWS, but, as always, this blog presents my thoughts alone.&nbsp; Not least here, because I agree more with Mogil than the head of the NWS, Louis Uccellinni, about this forecast.)&nbsp; One school of forecast (or model) evaluation looks at computing large scale statistics.&nbsp; The most famous one for global atmospheric models is the 5 day, 500 millibar (halfway up the atmosphere), wave number 1-20 (large scale patterns), anomaly correlation.&nbsp; When people refer to the ECMWF model (or 'Euro') being better than the NWS's model (GFS), this is usually the number that is being compared.&nbsp; But I don't live halfway up the atmosphere, nor do most of you.&nbsp; We're somewhere near the bottom of the atmosphere.&nbsp; And there is much more of interest than just average temperature through a layer of the atmosphere.&nbsp; So there are many other scores (dozens of them) -- See <a href="http://www.emc.ncep.noaa.gov/gmb/STATS_vsdb/">http://www.emc.ncep.noaa.gov/gmb/STATS_vsdb/</a> for some examples and discussion of what the scores mean.<br /><br />Most of those scores, though, don't get to my personal -- weather forecast consumer -- interest.&nbsp; Namely, I'm trying to make a decision of some kind.&nbsp; NYC, which heard a forecast of 24" (60 cm) but got 9" (22 cm), presumably made decisions that they wouldn't have if they'd heard the perfect forecast that hindsight now provides.&nbsp; It's here, I think, that we get to the meat of forecast evaluation.&nbsp; Had this same error been made over the ocean, rather than over the most populated city in the US, with the rest being as it happened, the NWS would be getting praised for their great forecast.&nbsp; The important part was not difference between reality and forecast, but number of people who made the wrong (in hindsight) decisions.<br /><br />So let's explore evaluating forecasts by way of our decisions.&nbsp; I don't make decisions for major metropolitan areas, and not about street plowing and so forth, so will leave that aside.&nbsp; One realm of weather-affected decisions is in my running.&nbsp; Let's ignore summer decisions (I'd as soon avoid thinking about what summers are like here) and go with the path as temperatures drop.&nbsp; Normal gear -- in pleasant weather conditions, is t-shirt and shorts.&nbsp; Once it cools below 60 F (16 C), I pull on a pair of gloves for my run.<br /><a name='more'></a><br />Temperature is my forecast variable of interest.&nbsp; Wear gloves, or not, is my decision.&nbsp; If the forecast is right, we're not yet done.&nbsp; For my purpose here, 'right' is just being on the correct side of 60 F.&nbsp; But forecasting isn't perfect, and doesn't have to be in order to be useful.&nbsp; We need to consider the rest of the 'payoff matrix'.&nbsp; If I wear gloves, and shouldn't (forecast to be below 60, but it is actually above), well, that's a minor nuisance.&nbsp; Give it -1 point.&nbsp; It isn't entirely negligible.&nbsp; If it were, I'd just carry gloves all the time.&nbsp; The other side is if I don't wear gloves, but should have.&nbsp; This leads to a very unpleasant run, much more unpleasant than the nuisance of carrying gloves I didn't need.&nbsp; Give that, say, -5 points.&nbsp; And, to round out the matrix +1 point for the correct forecast.<br /><br /><table border="2"><tbody><tr><td>Payoff Matrix</td><td>Should have worn gloves</td><td>Should not have worn gloves</td></tr><tr><td>Did wear gloves</td><td>+1</td><td>-1</td></tr><tr><td>Did not wear gloves</td><td>-5</td><td>+1</td></tr></tbody></table><br />I have two things to consider in evaluating the forecasts.&nbsp; First, forecast versus observation (the verification matrix).&nbsp; Second, how much I care (my payoff matrix).&nbsp; To score the forecast in terms of my decision, we multiply each cell from my payoff matrix by the corresponding cell in the verification matrix, and add up all those numbers.&nbsp; If the forecasts were perfect, the score/value would be +1.&nbsp; If it were always wrong, and always saying it was warmer than 60 but turning out always to be colder, the score would be -5.&nbsp; Reality will be somewhere in between.&nbsp; At some point, the value/score is positive.&nbsp; As long as the score is positive, it makes more sense to listen to the forecast (it is useful) than to ignore it.<br /><table border="2"><tbody><tr><td>Verification Matrix</td><td>Forecast &gt; 60F</td><td>Forecast &lt; 60 F</td></tr><tr><td>Observed &gt; 60F</td><td>0.5</td><td>0.05</td></tr><tr><td>Observed &lt; 60F</td><td>0.05</td><td>0.4</td></tr></tbody></table><br />(I've just made up the numbers here. For a real application, you have to check out your local forecast source.)<br /><br />Given this verification matrix, the forecast score is 1*0.5 + (-1)*0.05 + (-5)*0.05 + 1*0.4, or 0.6. Not too bad versus a perfect score of 1. But room to improve. To make me happier, the best thing for the forecasters to do is to not make as many mistakes predicting weather to be above 60 when it turns out to be colder. Given my preferences, they can be wrong 5 times as often in predicting cold than predicting warm. So, if they have to hedge the forecast, they should hedge cold. <br /><br />There's a different side to evaluating forecasts in terms of decisions.&nbsp; Namely, the forecast can have a perfect score even if it is 'always wrong'.&nbsp; The forecast is 'wrong' if the observed temperature is different (at all) from the forecast.&nbsp; But as long as I always make the correct decision, I don't care.&nbsp; If the forecast is 68 F (20 C), and observed is 63 F (17 C), I'm still happy -- I correctly did not wear gloves.&nbsp; If it was wrong as much in the other direction, I still don't care.&nbsp; For 73 F, I still don't wear gloves.&nbsp; On the other hand, if the forecast is 61 F, and observed is 59 F, I care a lot -- that's a -5 point forecast.&nbsp; If it's forecast 61 F and observed is 63 F, perfect forecast -- for my decision.&nbsp; Two things here -- my real scoring system is not symmetric (a +2 degree error isn't always equally bad as a -2 error), and it isn't homogeneous (how much I care about the +2 error also depends on what the forecast was). <br /><br />Most of the scores at the top are symmetric and homogeneous.&nbsp; They kind of have to be, because the NWS doesn't know everybody's decision process and payoff matrix.&nbsp; They just try to drive down the errors everywhere (with some extra attention to the US) and hope that makes everybody happier.&nbsp;<br /><br />There's a lot more to evaluating forecasts.&nbsp; This is just a start.&nbsp; I'll be interested in other people's weather-affected decisions and how you evaluate forecast quality.<br /><br /><br />*Ok, I've been slow to post, and by now we've had several 'historic' storms.&nbsp; The one I'm referring to is the January 26-28 storm that was indeed historic for Boston, but merely relatively heavy in NYC.http://moregrumbinescience.blogspot.com/2015/02/forecast-evaluation.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Robert Grumbine)3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5337555368793819627.post-9022157754294399928Tue, 17 Feb 2015 12:30:00 +00002015-02-17T07:30:01.544-05:00astronomybeing a scientistdoing scienceChandler and the Chandler WobbleThe fact that the earth wobbles was expected/predicted long before it was observed, which makes for a couple stories about the nature of science and the people who do it.&nbsp; The story of the Chandler wobble starts up almost a century before Chandler was born.&nbsp; In 1765, the Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler, whose name appears throughout mathematics and physics, was examining the mathematics for conservation of angular momentum on a rotating spheroid -- i.e., something like the earth.&nbsp; It turned out that such a body could have a wobble on top of its regular rotation.&nbsp; Given what was known about the shape of the earth then, Euler predicted a period for his wobble of about 305 days.&nbsp; (Modern information doesn't change this number much.)<br /><br />The magnitude of such a wobble could also be estimated from the law of conservation of angular momentum, and was somewhere around 0.1 seconds of arc.&nbsp; That made for a difficult observation in 1765, and it wasn't until 1841 that astronomers started trying to observe this 10 month (305 day) wobble.&nbsp; Given data analysis methods of the day -- pencil and paper -- analyses were done looking to see if there was a signal with a 10 month period.&nbsp; No such signal was found, even though several people looked.&nbsp; Side note being that one of the astronomers who looked in to this was Friedrich Bessel, who was the first person to measure the parallax (thence distance) to a star.&nbsp; Quality of observing skill was not an issue in his failure to detect the wobble.&nbsp; <br /><br />Enter, then, in the late 1880s the next start of our story, and some options of how to tell it.&nbsp; I could tell the story about a 'lone genius, toiling in obscurity until his great moment'.&nbsp; It would be doing some fair amount of violence to reality, but that hasn't stopped all story tellers.&nbsp; Chandler was indeed not being paid to do science.&nbsp; He made his living as a merchant.&nbsp; But keep in mind, though, that in the 1800s, 'scientist' even as a label was fairly new, and very few people who were scientists, or rather, who were doing science, did it full time.&nbsp; Many were men of independent means who used their free time to try to understand the world.<br /><br />Chandler was one such, but his roots in astronomy extended far back -- to high school. <br /><a name='more'></a>In his last year of high school, he performed mathematical computations for an astronomer.&nbsp; After graduation, he become the assistant of another astronomer.&nbsp; Later, he worked in the US Coast Survey -- later named the US Coast and Geodetic Survey.&nbsp; The science of determining the size, shape, orientation, and rotation of the earth is Geodesy (belated spoiler alert).&nbsp; Then he changed areas of work, married, had children and other usual things.&nbsp; But he was still pulling out his telescope to observe the stars, and in touch with at least one major astronomer.<br /><br />His story gets more active in the 1880s, by which time he's over 40.&nbsp; He invents his own instrument to measure the passage of stars overhead.&nbsp; The reason for concern about this is that all astronomical observations were made from the earth, so knowing that it was the earth that moved rather than the stars, is crucial.&nbsp; Getting more precise understanding of the earth's orientation, then, helps interpret all other astronomical observations -- the kind of calculations that Chandler was doing for his astronomer mentors, and in the Coast Survey.<br /><br />After collecting a bunch of data, ensuring that it was high quality data by making improved instruments himself, Chandler made the key different choice from Bessel and others.&nbsp; Rather than look just at the expected period of 10 months, he took on the far greater workload of analyzing the data for variation at all periods.&nbsp; Out came a peak at 428 days (~14 months), not the expected 305.&nbsp; Chandler then extended his work to look at the data collected by other people in the previous century, again finding an about 14 month period in the earlier data.&nbsp; <br /><br />So the real key was not the quality of the data, but doing the analysis without expectation.&nbsp; Rather than thinking ill of any of the previous researchers, congratulate the amateur.&nbsp; Analyzing without expectation meant doing thousands of computations by pencil and paper.&nbsp; No computers in 1891!<br /><br />The follow up is that within the next year Newcomb presented the physics that explained why the wobble's period was so much longer than expected.&nbsp; In doing his computations, Euler had worked with a rigid earth.&nbsp; But the earth is not exactly and entirely rigid.&nbsp; It has some give to it.&nbsp; This was known to be true before Euler, but there was no reason to consider it to be important for the wobble, so no computation.&nbsp; Given the observations and analysis of real wobble by Chandler, Newcomb took up that extra calculation -- applying Euler's mathematics but to an earth that is somewhat elastic.&nbsp; Bingo.&nbsp; As the earth flexes a little bit while wobbling, it slows down the speed of the wobble.<br /><br />This is an opportunity that amateurs missed.&nbsp; The calculation of wobble for a flexible earth could have been done any time between 1765 and 1891.&nbsp; But nobody did.&nbsp; This strikes me as a recurring theme in the history of science.&nbsp; Observations make something theoretically interesting, so then a theoretician is motivated to work on an explanation.&nbsp; The converse is also illustrated in this story -- a theoretical calculation (Euler's) motivates observers to perform particular observations and analyses.<br /><br />For more than a century (this is a really slow moving story), the effort on Chandler Wobble turned to trying to explain why it's still around.&nbsp; So more blogging to come.<br /><br />In the mean time, a bit of opinion about amateurs.&nbsp; One of the situations in which I think amateurs have the most room to contribute is what Chandler did -- being able to analyze data without preconceptions.&nbsp; Professionals these days have to propose what they're going to find, and that what they're going to find is significant.&nbsp; The 'no preconceptions' doesn't fit well with that.&nbsp; You might not find anything, and if you do, it may not be significant.&nbsp; The professionals then move on to what they expect to be the richer area.<br /><br />If you're doing something because you love it, on the other hand, even if you don't find anything, you've been doing something interesting, so a win.&nbsp; If you find something, but it isn't interesting to the professionals, it's still interesting to you, and you did find something.&nbsp; Even bigger win.&nbsp; And every so often, like Chandler, you'll find something that is very important.<br /><br />I'd also suggest emulating Chandler in a different way.&nbsp; Namely, he was in regular contact with the professionals in the area.&nbsp; While his work wasn't something many were interested in doing themselves, it was worth discussion.&nbsp; http://moregrumbinescience.blogspot.com/2015/02/chandler-and-chandler-wobble.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Robert Grumbine)2